#i have never seen confidence modelled or whatever my therapist says

[breninarthur]

feeling a bit down about my writing and characters

#i dislike talking about it in public because i dont want it to look like im fishing for compliments or reassurance 'cause im really not #i just need to vent #so I've come to my least populated social media lol #this place truly does feel like a void #i hate that i dont know how to describe my characters or plot #it makes me feel like a bad writer with nothing but amorphous blob ideas #and i find it hard to believe that anyone cares about them even if they say they do #i have never seen confidence modelled or whatever my therapist says #part of the reason i wanna get into art is 'cause i feel like people would care more #no one wants to read thousands of words of what i have to say #if no one wants to read my fanfic than why would i think anyone will want to read my novel? #if i can even get it published #or finished #op

[polyamorousmood]

How do you deal with insecurity in a polyam relationship?

I've been in a poly V before, with my girlfriend at the time, and her other partner; but I honestly wasn't really invested in the relationship so I wasn't bothered.

I feel like,, if I have a partner and we either a) accept another and form a triad or b) I end up with a metamour again, I would end up worrying that my parner(s) would leave me to simply be together.

(For context, I have AvPD so like... abandonment is a complex of mine and I'm working on it but I'm still so insecure a lot of the time.)

So.. yeah. I've seen you address jealousy/envy, and I know I'd probably deal with a bit of that (in the sense that 'oh, b gets to spend time with c while I'm at work, I'm envious' kind of way) but I know that insecurity would be the thing that would bother me the most

Polysecure by Jessica Fern is generally considered a holy text 🛐of polyamory and this exact question in particular. I haven't read it personally (yet. Its on my list my list is just long 😅) So if you haven't given that a go yet, everyone I know who has read it, has recommended at least sections of it. I know it talks about attachment styles and how to handle those, which might be helpful if you have avoidant personality disorder.

The other thing, of course, is consider bringing this up with a therapist, because I am not one. And this seems like a touchy enough topic that everything I say here is pulled from my experience and should be taken as "ideas to think about🤔" and not "clinical advise that will Fix It🪄" As per usual, LOTS to go over here. So. read more.

P.S. after typing up everything, I realized this post I wrote to help a supportive partner address insecurity might also be helpful for you, and even has a worksheet! Its probably better formatted too. So.. maybe I wasted my typing here 😓. C'est la vie.

Firstly, you never said you identify as polyamorous. So if you're not... you could just date monogamously 🤷 as much as I love 💟polyamory and would like it if the whole world loved it too, if that's gonna be too big a thing for you, there's no reason you have to bother at all.

If you are going to date polyamorously for whatever reason, BEFORE you introduce another person to the mix, have a regular, set time you and your partner spend apart. It sounds counter-intuitive, but maintaining your own social life and identity outside your partner is huge. Do this especially when you're super invested and want to spend every second with your partner. That's honestly true whether you're poly or not, but in this specific case. I think a lot of the fear is bolstered by the idea that without you there, your partner is just spending that time loving the other person. And maybe they'd like to do that more blah blah blah. But this proves that's not the case: when you're not there, you partner is getting drinks with the girls, or building model ships, or any other numerous things they like independent of you. And it also means you're not just pining over your partner when you're gone, you have other shit to do too. And you'll come to look forward to your two hours a week at the coffee shop (or whatever). You will learn reasonable time apart does not equal less romantic interest.

And then, on the flip side of that, set regular protected time with your partner. Not to say never ever will something come up that interrupts that. Emergencies arise🚨, or the time may have to be renegotiated later, etc etc. But having the confidence that no matter what, you'll have a movie date every week, or that Tuesday night is Romance Night, or whatever you decide on, can make it easier. It can help prevent you feeling taken for granted, and can naturally curb NRE with other people if that starts getting unruly. If your partner starts wanting to cut into this time for not-important-shit, tell them you're not okay with that, or -- and only if truly it feels okay to you -- at least get them to make the time up the next day. And you, of course, need to treat it as special too. Make the time important, fulfilling, and intimate. It can be any activity, as long as its bonding time -- quality time, in the truest sense of the word.

Take time to get to know yourself, and share it with your partner. What do you consider to be sacred between you and your partner? Are you okay with your meta and your partner having sacred things -- what type of things? Do you feel better knowing the details of your partner's other relationships, or will that make you more jealous? (I like knowing more, because the thought of my partner having this secret life without me makes me more insecure, but other people are very reasonably of the opinion that hearing that their partner had so much fun without them is a bummer.) How much about you are you okay with your partner dilvulging to your meta(s)? Go through this on as many things as you can think of. Now, what you're comfortable with is not the only factor here; you and your partner will probably both have to make some concessions to reach something workable, but I've found that process, with a good partner, to be more securing in and of itself. You both are working together towards a common understanding. Its generally good practice to avoid hard-and-fast rules here, when possible. For example, "I'm only okay with you dating others if you're home by 11🕚 every night" makes some sense, but if taken literally means if your partner gets a flat on the way home, or has to deal with your meta's mental breakdown, or even just wants to see a movie that won't finish until 11:05 -- that's a betrayal. Perhaps even just asking for a one-time allowance is a betrayal. Instead, work for understandings or guidelines. Maybe the similar understanding in this example is "its hard for me to sleep alone, so I'd like you to generally be home by 11:00, and notify me as soon as possible if that's not going to happen" and then when they bring up wanting to stay out late one night for something, you can ask if its possible for them to do it on a night you don't have to work in the morning (maybe they can, maybe they can't, the point here is that its a dialogue, see below). There will be some trial and error here, so be prepared for that and stick it out.

Don't take every problem as a sign things are doomed, or your partner is divesting, or your partner isn't worth your investment. There will be times when someone is actually abusive, or there will be irreconcilable differences. I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about "My partner is late for the second time this week, they're pulling away from me, this is the beginning of the end"-type shit. No it ain't. A good exercise for this is to explicitly outline your worst-case scenario💣, followed by a best case-scenario🌈, and then a few most likely cases⬜. So from our example above, worst case is that they're pulling away (so you have to pull away faster so you "win" and avoid pain), best case-scenario is that they're late because they're buying you a gift on their way home, and most likely scenario is that traffic's worse than they planned or they ran into someone at the gas station and stopped to talk for a bit or whatever.

Figure out how to self-soothe. Make a stache of nice things your partner has done for you that you can check on your own to remind yourself you're important to them. Reframe some of your jealous worries. Remind yourself of things you're looking forward to with your partner. Make a vent journal. Whatever clicks to you.

And as always, 🗣️talk to your partner. Productively talk to your partner.🗣️ Talk to your partner as much as possible about how things make you feel, and make sure they're doing the same. I talk more about how to talk through problems here, and its worth the read imho (even though its equally long). But for now, know that forming this habit on its own is functionally indistinguishable from being securely attached. As long as the communication is you and your partner vs the problem (and not, for example, your insecurity vs your partner's willingness to compromise), this will be good for the relationship, and you will feel better for doing it. But to form that habit, you have to do it with everything, not just Big Problems. You have to tell your partner sincerely how much you appreciate stuff they're getting right, you have to tell them about small problems that you can handle on your own, you have to tell them about things you're not sure how you feel about yet.

#jealousy #insecurity #poly relationship advice #ask box is always open

[emy-loves-you]

Sanders Sides AU-gust Day 13: Rock Band

Patton is the most popular boy in school, yet he can’t get the attention of his three crushes. When he learns that they’re all starting a band together, he becomes determined to make their dreams come true. Patton POV, endgame LAMP 

TW: Use of homophobic slur

Day 12 | Masterlist | Day 14

Patton Picani liked to think that he had superpowers. He could sway almost any person to be kind with just a smile. He could ask one question and topple an entire social norm. He could transform a nobody into a somebody with just a few words. It was his superpower, the ability to effortlessly sway the masses.

The truth was… complicated. Or rather, it was a series of scenarios and lessons that gave Patton this ‘superpower.’ The people who gave them to him? His parents, Emile and Remy Picani.

Emile and Remy loved their son very much and taught them everything they knew. This wasn’t a bad thing; Patton soaked up the lessons like a sponge. But the parents each had different things to teach him. Emile taught Patton everything he knew as a therapist so he could avoid conflicts. How to tell what someone’s feeling, what to say when someone’s upset, etc. Remy taught Patton how to grow up in a world turned against him. How to tell the difference between real and fake friends, how to lie with a straight face, how to spot a bully, etc. Emile helped Patton be confident in expressing himself with pastel colors and skirts. Remy helped Patton never lose a game of poker. So before Patton even started elementary school, he knew how to use his ‘superpowers.’

Patton also learned things on his own throughout the years. He learned that bullies were feared but not trusted. He learned that teacher’s pets would tell on you at a moment’s notice. He learned how to control the rumor mill, and which friends would stab him in the back. So in their tiny town with only three elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school, Patton rose to power quickly. But Patton wouldn’t abuse his power. No, Patton tried to make a difference. He offered teacher’s pets protection and popularity in exchange for getting bullies suspended. He kept the rumor mill focused on the popular kids and away from the nobodies that couldn’t protect themselves. He ruined the lives of violent jocks and snotty rich kids with a few words and a disapproving frown. Bullying reached an all-time low, and by the time Patton was in high school he was the ‘friend’ of almost everyone in the city under the age of 21 (and all their parents. Patton was a model citizen, no one could dislike him).

But there was a cost for Patton’s power. Even though he was technically ‘friends’ with everyone, he didn’t have any actual friends. Everyone thought they were his friend, but after a while, everyone’s faces started to look the same. And even when they did catch Patton’s attention, they were usually too far down the social ladder for Patton to be more than casual acquaintances with.

There were exactly three people that caught Patton’s attention, and they just so happened to be his three crushes.

The first crush came in the form of Roman Prince. Like the name implied, Roman was a Disney Prince in terms of charisma and charm. He was in every school theatre production, and almost always the lead role. He would have been a popular kid, if not for his rivalry against Janice Mayberry. Janice had been at the top of the social ladder just as long as Patton had. She was extremely pretty, and a cheerleader to boot, so not even Patton’s influence could top the sheer power she held. So outside of the theatre group, Roman was a nobody. But Roman was also daring, and just, and drop-dead gorgeous. Patton attended every single play and musical, just to see Roman on stage. But beyond giving Roman a brief ‘congratulations’ at the end of each production, Patton couldn’t talk to him.

Patton could interact with his other crush a little more. Logan Berry was the definition of a nerd. He was in all advanced classes, he wore ties, he never got below 95% on any test. But he wasn’t a teacher’s pet. Actually, most teachers here hated Logan, for the simple fact that Logan would not let mistakes slide by. If a teacher said something wrong during a lesson, Logan spoke up. If a teacher graded something unfairly, Logan spoke up about it. The teachers always tried to report Logan for his ‘attitude,’ but the truth was he didn’t have an attitude. Logan only stated facts, and he kept his hand up politely while never having any sort of inflection in his tone. There were only a hand full of people that could make him show emotion, hence the nickname ‘robot.’ Patton wanted to speak up about the nickname, but he knew it would only draw more attention to Logan. But Logan wasn’t emotionless. He was kind, and patient, and helpful. Patton had needed help in his math classes, and his parents paid Logan to be his tutor. Patton ignored the fact the Logan was being paid to interact with him. Logan was extremely good with explanations, even when Patton couldn’t wrap his head around a concept. After a few weeks of math tutoring, Patton asked for help with English. One thing led to another, and they were basically study-buddies (with, you know, one of them being paid). But outside of study sessions, Patton couldn’t talk to him.

Then there was Virgil Storm. Virgil had transferred to their high school halfway through Freshman year. He was a loner, never seen hanging out with anyone. But something about him immediately drew in Patton’s attention. Maybe it was the (confirmed) rumors of Virgil getting kicked out of other schools due to fights. Maybe it was the way that his lips quirked every time he got a question right in class. Or maybe it was the way he looked in gym class, hoodie off and muscles exposed. Whatever the reason, Patton had been drawn to Virgil. Even if they had never spoken to each other. Well, until now.

It was September of Sophomore year, and Patton had been strolling down the hallway, minding his own business. He normally didn’t eat lunch at school, so he used this time to interact with teens outside of classes.

Crash!

Patton’s head whipped around, seeing a student shoved into the lockers. Now, that wouldn’t do at all. Patton quickly made his way to the fight, quickly recognizing the two teens. Virgil was on the ground with a bloody lip, while Jacob Smith stood over him. Jacob was captain of the football team, if Patton remembered correctly. Patton frowned as he noticed several of his ‘friends’ stand in the background but not help Virgil.

“Jacob!” Patton stepped between Virgil and Jacob, effectively pulling everyone’s attention towards him. Patton put on his best ‘disappointed’ expression. “Why are you hurting him?”

Jacob frowned. “He deserved it, Patton!”

Patton tilted his head slightly, making sure he kept the wide-eyed, innocent look. “What did he do?”

Jacob growled. “He’s a faggot that deserves to rot in Hell!”

Patton used all of his self-control to not show any of his shock. He didn’t know Jacob was such a homophobe. To use slurs and hurt a kid for being gay? That won’t do at all. Patton kept his curious look. “What does ‘faggot’ mean? Does it mean he’s a meanie?” Poor, innocent Patton wouldn’t know what that word meant. And Jacob Smith just sullied poor Patton’s mouth with those words. At least, that’s what everyone else thought.

Everyone stood in silence before someone spoke up. “It means he’s gay!” Patton couldn’t figure out who said that, but he mentally thanked them for giving him the perfect opening.

“So he got hit because he’s gay?” Patton hunched over slightly, pulling out all the stops for his ‘innocent, defenseless little lamb’ look.

Jacob smirked, glad to see that Patton was catching on. “Yeah, he deserves to be beat until he learns his lesson!”

Patton let his lip quiver as he summoned his crocodile tears. “B-but I’m gay!” While this wasn’t extremely common knowledge, it was extremely implied through Patton’s mannerisms and style of dress. Patton let the tears pour out. Several students started to approach as they caught on to what Patton was implying. “A-are you gonna b-beat me too?”

Jacob seemed to realize his mistake. “Pat-” He moved in to wrap his arms around Patton.

Patton flinched in (fake) fear, throwing his hands over his head. Still, what he yelled was loud and clear. “NO, PLEASE DON’T HURT ME!” Several students grabbed Jacob by the arms and dragged him away.

Janice approached Patton now, making sure to put some distance between them. “Are you okay, Pat?”

Patton let out a shaky sigh before lowering his arms. He gave Janice a wobbly smile. “Y-yeah. I’m gonna go wash my face in the bathroom. Can you go make sure Jacob doesn’t try this again?” Janice nodded, slinking off to wherever Jacob was dragged to. Now that all of the crowd was focused on Jacob, Patton turned his attention to Virgil. He was staring up at Patton with a mixture of awe and… fear? “C’mon, let’s go get cleaned up.” Virgil nodded mutely, getting up on his own. He grabbed his bag and a case of some sort (he probably dropped them when Jacob attacked him) before following Patton to the nearest bathroom. Patton grabbed some paper towels and got them wet before handing them to Virgil, who sat on the counter of the sinks. “Here, for your lip.” Virgil accepted it silently, dotting his lip to stem the bleeding. “I could take you to the nurse if you want.” Virgil shook his head no and Patton shrugged, moving to fix his makeup.

“Is it true?” Patton’s head shot up and Virgil looked away with a blush, hiding his face in his hoodie. “That you’re… um…”

Patton finished the question. “That I’m gay?” Virgil nodded, still blushing. “Yeah, I am. Are you also gay, or was Jacob accusing you of being gay for no reason?” Because if Virgil wasn’t gay, then that was an entirely different can of worms to deal with (one of which being Patton’s crush on him).

Virgil nodded. “Yeah, Jacob had seen my phone screen with me and my boyfriends.”

Patton tilted his head. He didn’t know that Virgil had boyfriends. “Can I see?” Virgil nodded, slowly taking out his phone to show Patton the lock screen. Logan, Roman and Virgil all stared at him, huddled under a mass of blankets. Patton felt his heart constrict at the fact that all of his crushes were dating each other so Patton didn’t have a chance, and smiled. “Awe, you look so cute together!” He moved to resume working on his makeup and accidentally bumped Virgil’s case with his foot. “What do you have in there?” He asked, genuinely curious.

Virgil blushed. “It’s a guitar. Me and my boyfriends were gonna practice after school.”

Patton let his eyebrows raise in shock. “You guys play guitar?”

Virgil turned even redder. “I do. Roman does bass and Logan does drums. We have a small band called The Sides. It’s nothing really.”

Patton’s eyes lit up. “You have a band? That’s so cool! Do you play at parties?” Patton hadn’t been to many parties lately.

Virgil sighed. “No, not yet. I don’t think we’ll ever be good enough for that.”

Patton shook his head. “I bet you are! Do you know how awesome it would be to have a live band at your party instead of some lame DJ? I promise, once you start promoting yourself, people will be begging to hire you!” Suddenly, the bell went off, signaling the end of lunch. “Oh, I’ve gotta go. See you later!”

Patton made a note to bring up playing instruments with Logan during their next study session. Even if Patton could never be romantically involved with his crushed, he could still make them happy. And if that meant pulling a few strings to make them the most popular music group in school?

Well, Patton was willing to pull a few strings for them.

#sanders sides #AU_gust_2020 #rock band au #LAMP #patton sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #Janus Sanders #fem janus

[overheardatthecontinental]

John Wick had a problem.

Helen would tell him he had many problems.

But for now, he was concentrating on one. What had started as weekly tradition of breaking into his therapist’s home had quickly increased to every day he was in New York. Then he was making excuses to run into the city so that he could watch her sleep. And now… it had been more than a week since John spent a night in his own bed.

In the early hours of the morning, John would either make his way to the Continental or home, where he would shower and sleep, confident in the knowledge that Helen was at her office. He would work, or find something to occupy his waking hours, until the clock struck eleven. And then he would, inevitably, find his way back to her.

His obsession with his therapist was getting out of hand.

But he couldn’t resist. He craved the very sight of her. It was like his body hummed with frustration and anxiety whenever she was out of his sight, only to be eased by the image of her in bed, the smell of her lotion, the soft sighs that escaped her as she shifted in her sleep.

It was a problem.

But he couldn’t bear to stop.

And unlike his other problems, he couldn’t just talk to Helen. The idea was laughable.

He can picture it now, as he sits in the parking lot outside her office:

“What would you like to talk about today, John?”

“Well, I can no longer go twenty-four hours without being in your presence, except, we only meet once a week, so the other six days, I break into your house and watch you sleep.”

Yeah. That’s not happening.

He stares at the clock on the dashboard, watching the minutes slowly dance by until he can see her. At 3:50, he watches her previous client leave the building and the remaining five minutes creep by. By 3:54, he’s had enough. He turns off his idling car and heads into the building, no longer caring about how it looks to arrive so early to a session.

Her door is open, as usual, and she is standing over her desk, leaning over so she can type on her laptop. Her seldom-seen glasses are perched on her nose as she does, and John has to stop the barrage of thoughts that come from seeing her in such a position.

Her sweater dress could so easily be pushed up her thighs and…

No. Entertaining these thoughts is doing nothing to help him and every day, he feels himself slip more and more into his obsession.

“Come in, John.” She says, only then glancing up from the screen. “How was your day?”

“Alright.” He says, and Helen closes the laptop and takes off her glasses. A pity, he thinks. She really is so pretty in those glasses.

She grabs a Keurig pod from the basket over her desk before checking, “Planning for a late night?”

Always, now, he thinks. John nods and Helen slips it into the coffee maker and quickly turns it on.

“Oh! Before we start, can I ask a favor? I need to use your body.” He nearly chokes at her phrasing but immediately relaxes as she points to the air conditioner in her window. “I tried to take it out earlier and I saw my life flash before my eyes.”

John glances at her outfit. “In heels?”

She sends him a half-hearted glare. “Honestly, I didn’t even think about it before I came in today. But I heard on the radio that we’re supposed to get a frost this weekend. Usually I’d ask Mike, the building super, but he’s not answering his phone.”

“No problem.” John says, slipping out of his suit jacket and laying it on the chair. “Where does it go?”

“The floor is fine; I just want it out.”

He gives her a look and repeats himself, something he would never do for anyone else in the world, “Where does it go?”

Helen rolls her eyes good-naturedly, “There’s a storage closet down the hall.”

It’s already unplugged so John tucks away the wire and lifts the window off the machine. “Hold the door.” John tells her as he tugs the unit free of the window. It occurs to him how easily an air conditioner, if properly timed, could be used to make a murder look like an accident. A push at the right moment and a crushing death for whoever awaited below…

He follows Helen into the hall and down to where the closet. She quickly unlocks the door and points to the metal shelves where it goes.

He sets it down gently on the shelf, “Good to go.” He says, straightening his vest.

“You’re the best.” Helen tells him.

“Next time,” John says, “Just call me. I’m usually in New York. No near-death experiences with air conditioners. It might be… difficult” impossible “to find a new therapist.”

Helen smacks him on the arm as they walk back to the office, “You’re ridiculous.”

He inclines his head as they slip back in. Helen finds a cover for the coffee, which has finished brewing, and hands it off to John.

“What have you been up to this week?”

Killing, stalking, and watching you sleep.

“Nothing new.” He answers, taking a sip of the coffee as he finds his seat.

“Did you have many cases this week?”

I took extra so that I would be in New York, just so I had an excuse to check on you.

“A few. Nothing too extreme.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask for your definition of extreme.”

His lips twitch.

“Have you given much thought to what we discussed last week?”

“Which part?”

“Your identity. The age-old question that we all must ask of ourselves: who am I?”

Of course, he has. He is now fluent in Erikson’s model, killing the daylight hours with reading things she referenced. Taking delight in the fact that, after his mention of Godwin, he had found the anarchist’s texts on her bedside table.

A silent exchange.

Neither of them will address it but he knows that it has happened. That she cares, in whatever way she does. And he loves her for it.

“A bit.”

“And what did you think about?”

John sinks back into his chair, “My house.”

Helen inclines her head, “Oh?”

“It’s, uh… it’s a nice house, a nice property but it’s just a house.”

“It’s not a home?” She asks, trying to clarify his meaning.

And John nods. “If you were to walk through it,” ah, what a thought, “you probably wouldn’t be able to tell it was mine. I still have the furnishings and the art that came with it. And I don’t have a lot of… stuff. Aside from my clothes, and my books, there’s nothing really there that’s mine.”

“Possessions don’t always reflect personality.”

He thinks about her home. The throw cushion on her couch that says choose happy and the fleece blanket she wraps up in while watching television that’s covered in daisies. The potted plants that advertise the presence of a nurturer, the pictures taken with her friends. There is framed artwork on her walls that seem to highlight her softness.

He thinks of Aurelio’s place, littered with spare car parts. John had once gone to sit on Aurelio’s couch only to land on a steering wheel. There were pictures of his family. A neon sign that Aurelio claimed to have stolen from a pub in Queens. Old magazines on his kitchen table, beer bottles piled next to an overflowing recycling.

Even Winston, who John regarded as a fairly private person, displayed a collection of old chess sets. He proudly put a collection of knives under a glass that he claimed belonged to the third Elder. While there were no pictures of friends or family, he had a taste of the extremes. Large leather couches and glass tables. A collection of top-shelf liquors sat next to an antique globe.

“That’s true,” He says, “But I see other people’s homes and spaces, and they almost seem to belong to them. And mine is as empty as a hotel room.” John pauses in thought, “I’m well aware that my personality is… bland but—”

Helen cuts him off, “Bland?” She repeats, amusement etched onto her pretty face.

John shrugs, “I was recently compared to a block of wood.”

“By who?” Now, there is disbelief in her voice.

“Santino. One of my,” he cannot think of a better word, “colleagues.”

She rolls her eyes, “Well, I expect that you tend to close off around your,” she uses quotations, “’colleagues’.”

John opens a hand in well, what are you gonna do kind of way. “It’s hard to trust trained killers. The less they know about me, the better off I am.”

“We’re going to circle around to that.” Helen tells him, “But I do want to try to understand your thoughts surrounding your home.”

He isn’t quite sure what to say, “I don’t know. I suppose I have a tendency towards utilitarianism.”

Helen is nodding, thoughtfully. “Yet, you’re far past the time in your life when you weren’t able to afford the things you want. Which makes me think that it’s a choice you’ve made, to leave your own space barren.”

“I’ve considered as much.”

“And?”

John shrugs, “I’ve come to several conclusions but no real answers.”

“Tell me.”

“The first, is the most obvious. I grew up without having anything that was mine. I shared blankets, when we had them. Food. Clothing. I learned to live without superfluous things.”

She considers that, “A possibility, and certainly a contributor, but many people who grew up in poverty who, for lack of a better term, rise above their circumstances do the opposite. They buy everything they were never able to have as children.”

“If there’s something that I want, I’d get it. There’s just nothing that I want.” Except for what I can’t have, he thinks.

“When was the last time you bought yourself a little luxury? Nothing related to clothes or food or hygiene. Nothing for work. Just something for you?”

He bought himself several books on and by Erikson, the psychologist she had referenced the week before, but he doesn’t want to tell her that. And, now that he thinks of it, his last several purchases were books she had either mentioned, or he had seen on her bedside table and picked up for himself. Just in case it ever came up in conversation.

“Just books.” He tells her. “A few months ago, I bought a new coffee machine. Does that count?”

She smirks, “I would consider coffee a necessity.”

He grins back, “I’m sure you would.”

“So, nihilism aside…” John snorts at that assessment, but Helen continues, “You said you had other theories?”

John nods, “I also have to consider my Romani heritage. Even the orphanage moved around a lot. Nothing was permanent, until I got to New York. And then, I ran away. And then I was in the military, where we weren’t exactly able to bring things with us. Maybe I just can’t put stock into the idea of permanence.”

Helen seems to sigh, quietly. Empathy burns in her eyes and John can feel it, in turn, burning into him. He’s not quite sure how to deal with it.

Helen offers him a smile and it’s weighted in emotion as she teases, “Keep making connections like that and I’ll start to think you don’t need me anymore.”

“I’ll always need you.” It slips from him before he has a moment to think better of it.

A moment passes, his words lingering in the air and John hopes against hope that she can’t see just how enamored with her he is.

He desperately tries to think of something to say to fill the silence, to take back his words without taking away the meaning behind them.

“Good.” Helen says softly and, just like that, it’s over. “Now, going off of that idea of permanence, I wonder how much of it is habit, like you were saying, and how much of it might be a reflection of the loss you’ve gone through?”

“My experiences have conditioned me for loss?” He interprets.

And Helen shrugs, “Haven’t they?”

John thinks back. The Romani had kept him alive as a child, but they had shipped him off without so much as a goodbye. And while New York had been an improvement, there was still nothing that was his save a stolen Bible. He had left it behind when he ran away to Mexico.

In Mexico, he had shelter. He was a child, but he still had his own tiny place carved out in the world. His own blanket, his own clothes. A worn copy of 1984 that he had stolen from a passenger on the train. It had all been burnt when his village had been razed, leaving him only with the clothes on his back.

The years that followed weren’t much better. He was forced back into the Underworld and while it was far from perfect, he preferred the freedom of it rather than being forced into social services. Being forced to make up some kind of lie to protect his Romani brethren. No, the Underworld was not perfect, but it was all he knew.

He was paid terribly because they could pay him terribly. He was given shit jobs but he took them so he could eat. And once he started growing, he needed new clothes. Over the course of two years, he grew a foot.

When he finally escaped that world again, he took only what he could carry with him. A small duffle full of clothes, a spare pair of shoes, and two knives that didn’t fit on his person.

When he joined the army, he didn’t take anything with him aside from a single book.

And it wasn’t until years later, when he decided enough was enough, and rejoined the fold that he had the ability to settle down.

“I can understand why that may be a part of it.” John admits, “But I think, mostly, it comes down to the fact that I just don’t care about most things.”

“Once again, nihilism makes an entrance.”

John shrugs, “I have more money than I ever dreamed of. And permanence doesn’t matter when I could afford to buy things a thousand times over. The only priceless possessions I have, I keep in my car. Just in case.”

She seems to brighten at that, leaning forward with interest, “And what does John Wick consider to be priceless?”

Not much, he thinks.

Her business card, which she had given him that first day in the café, with her cell phone number etched on the back. He keeps it tucked away in an envelope and locked in his glovebox.

A revolver gifted to him by Marcus. The only present he had ever been given without an expectation of reciprocation.

The copy of Walden he had taken from the little library at the military base where he trained. His only constant companion through three tours of duty.

He decides not to mention the first. “A gun given to me by an old friend. And a copy of Walden.”

“Thoreau.”

John nods.

Helen sits back, “I don’t associate you much with a love for nature. Is it the isolation aspect that attracts you, the civil disobedience piece, or that idea of self-reliance?”

“I would say all of it, although the self-reliance was what first pulled me in. It…” He hesitates, unsure of why he feels the need to share such a little thing with her, “It was the only possession I brought with me everywhere when I was in the army. And when I returned home.”

“It really stayed with you.”

John nods, “I suppose, it helped me learn to think a bit more critically. To challenge the automatic assumptions that came with growing up in the Underworld.”

“I imagine there was a sort of irony about reading such a text while in the military.”

He can’t stop the smile that crosses his lips. He doesn’t have to explain his bizarre humor or reasoning to Helen. She just gets it. “I’ll admit, that was part of the charm. Imposing those shades of grey into my life that were absent in the Underworld and, again, missing from the marines.”

She smiles back, “You pursue that duality in life. Toeing the line of arbitrary rules and ethics, while simultaneously embracing the meaninglessness.”

“Nihilism and Walden have been my constant companions.”

“Let’s add absurdism there for good measure.” She jokes and John finds himself laughing. Something he only does in her presence.  

He loves her. He loves her. He loves her.

He knows it, he feels it so deeply within him, but he can’t act on it. He won’t.

He knows she deserves so much better than him.

“Alright, back on topic.” Helen says with a small smile, “You said something last week that I’ve been considering in relation to this discussion.”

Grateful for the segue, John asks, “Oh?”

She nods, “You were talking about the idea of a normal life. A life away from the Underworld that you wanted, or at least considered, but identified as being out of reach.”

John nods back.

“I wonder, and please feel free to tell me if I’m off the mark, if those desires intersect with your decision to keep your house bare?”

He blinks, taking in her meaning.

His house is empty, in more ways than one. Just him and he doesn’t need anything. And the things he wants, well, he can’t have them. So why bother to fill his house with things that don’t matter? Why fill his house with trinkets when they’ll only serve to remind him of himself? Of the life he lives alone.

And John swears, “Fuck.”

Helen waits, in silence, as she always does while John works through his thoughts.

She’s right, to a degree, but it’s deeper than that.

He wonders if she realizes how much more it is. If she was truly asking him a question or manipulating him into figuring out for herself what she already suspected.

She was good at that. At breaking him down in ways that thousands of assassins never could figure out. He’d survived hundreds of attempts on his life but one question from Helen and he was ready to fall to his knees.

Fuck.

Minutes pass before Helen asks, “John?”

He swallows heavily, “I hate it when you’re right sometimes.”

“Epiphany?”

“Epiphany.” He echoes, “I think…” He hesitates.

She was right. Both today and last week, she had pinpointed the cause.

“I think you give me too much credit.” He had said softly.

“I don’t. But then, we’ve discussed your issues with self-esteem before.”

John rolled his eyes, “I don’t have poor self-esteem.”

“Oh, I agree. You have no self-esteem.”

Self-esteem just didn’t seem like an important thing. His reflective thoughts about himself didn’t affect his ability to work or to kill or to function.

And so, he had written them off as unimportant. Whereas Helen had been telling him, for weeks it seemed, that his sense of self mattered.

He tries not to look at her. He doesn’t need to look to know that she is staring at him kindly, non-judgmentally. Ready to listen and offer comfort.

“It’s okay, John.” She says softly, “You know you can say anything here.”

Anything, he thinks, except the words he swallows back every night.

He lets out a breath, “You’re right. About the self-esteem thing.”

She nods once, waiting for him to continue.

“I… don’t understand it, fully. I don’t get why it matters how I see myself but, I guess it does. At the end of the day, I don’t deserve a normal life. And I don’t deserve the things that come with it. Even if the things are just small tokens of normalcy.”

A moment passes that feels like an eternity to John.

“I want you to know, I’m unbelievably proud of you right now.”

He doesn’t want to look at her after that confession, but her words force him to raise his head in stunned disbelief. She can’t be serious…

But she’s staring at him in earnest, smiling softly, looking at him with kindness and gentleness and yes, with pride. She’s looking at him with pride in her eyes and he can’t quite figure out why.

And, as if she can sense his confusion, she adds, “You’ve been coming here for seven months and, for most of that time, you’ve been fairly resistant to actually being vulnerable.”

“I’ve told you things I’ve never told anyone.” John argues.

“I know. And I appreciate your trust in me. But there’s a difference between trusting me with legalities and learning to trust yourself enough to admit to these feelings. You’ve been sitting on these emotions for the better part of your life, John. Keeping them hidden or ignoring them. We joke about your nihilism when I think we both know that it’s easier to pretend nothing matters when we start to feel things too heavily.”

He sits with that.

God, is that what he’s been doing?

Ignoring his own self-hatred by ignoring anything that has to do with himself?

Filling his free time with work to keep him busy or reading, filling his mind with rationality and bullshit intellectualism rather than dealing with the emotions that linger below the surface?

But what else was he supposed to do?

Emotions were ignored most of his childhood, when fighting for survival was the precedent. And he just never learned.

Fuck.

Helen assesses him carefully, “What are you thinking, John?”

He’s not even entirely sure what he’s thinking but he settles on, “Life seemed simpler when my only focus was survival.”

She nods, thoughtfully, “I’m sure it did. Thought some people might argue that emotions offer a lot of evolutionary benefits.”

“Like what?”

“Well, anxiety warns us when we might be in danger. Anger helps us to protect ourselves. Sadness can help us to process complex events. Happiness and joy help us bond and create social alliances.”

She lets him mull that over before adding, “Your emotions are as much of a tool as your eyes and ears looking and listening for potential enemies.”

He considers that, too.

He gets her point. He really does, but his eyes and ears have never fucked with him the way his emotions did.

“I think it comes down to control.” He says thoughtfully.

“Oh?”

“I can close my eyes. I can choose not to listen. But my emotions…”

“You can’t shut them off. And ignoring only works for so long.”

“Yeah.”

Helen nods, “Our emotions are, arguably, one of the most complicated things to understand. And you’re right, they are one of the hardest things to control and while there are ways to change our thinking and challenge our automatic thoughts, we often can’t help what we feel.”

John knew that well.

He couldn’t help the hopelessness and the loneliness he experienced as a child.

He couldn’t help the intense anger at watching his first real home be burned to the ground.

He couldn’t help the contempt he felt for himself whenever he looked to deep inside himself.

And he certainly couldn’t help the intense obsession and other unnamable emotions that arose in him whenever he thought about Helen.

It wasn’t like he had tried to change any of it, though.

“Sometimes,” he admits softly, “I think that I force myself to feel the bad emotions. To force myself to suffer.”

Again, she nods, “Earlier you used the term deserve.”

“I don’t deserve anything.”

Fuck, did he really just say that? Out loud? To her?

He probably sounded like a whiny teenager. But Helen doesn’t look at him with annoyance or contempt.

She just inclines her head, “You know, I have a lot of clients who come in here and use the same language. I deserve this. I don’t deserve that.”

“I doubt most of your other client have killed people.”

In fact, he knows they haven’t. He had a background check run for every single person on her caseload to make sure she was safe in the hour she spent with them each week.

Helen, however, ignores him. “For most, it’s based on the Just World Theory. A sort of westernized karma that subscribes to the idea that the world is a fair place. And I know that you know, more than most, that this world is not a fair place.”

“No.” He agrees. “It’s not.”

Helen shakes her head, “We often bestow judgement. Upon ourselves, the people around us. Total strangers, even. And I’m as guilty as it as anyone,” he doubts that but she continues, “But you know what?”

“What?”

She shrugs a shoulder, “Doesn’t do a damn thing, offering judgement. It doesn’t change our past, our future. It doesn’t help us.” Her tone softens, “I know it’s not my place to offer an opinion…”

John shakes his head, “You know I value your thoughts.”

“I don’t know if God exists or if there’s a higher power. But I do know that we don’t get to decide who deserves what. We get dealt our hand and we do the best we can with it. And the more we fight that, the more we tell ourselves that we deserve better or worse, the more miserable we make ourselves.”

He hears her.

And he gets her point, he really does.

It’s not his position to make judgements. He doesn’t have a say in the twists and turns of luck that have amassed him a great wealth.

But it must be wrong because his most glaring example is looking into his eyes. He’s certain that he and Helen are not the same.

Helen is good, and kind, and gentle.

And John is harsh, and dark, and bad.

He’s not sure he can accept a world that views them on an equal playing field.

“You don’t have to believe me.” She tells him, her voice soft and understanding. He wonders, not for the first time, if she can read his mind. “But just consider it, okay?”

…..

He considers it. He spends the rest of the day considering it.

At the Continental, eating dinner, John found himself trying to challenge his automatic assumptions about the people around him.

Assassins, killers.

But did he really know anything else about them? Beyond rumors and hushed whispers? The same kind that followed him, that had turned John Wick into the Boogeyman.

He ponders her words: the more we tell ourselves that we deserve better or worse, the more miserable we make ourselves.

He was an expert at misery.

At best, he was a master of apathy. Hiding his misery under layers of not-caring. Like she said, it was easier to pretend that nothing mattered. It was easier to accept the self-hatred, or at the very least self-contempt, when he could just shrug it off.

Idly, he wonders what would happen if he just continues to ignore it.

Even as he thinks it, however, he knows it’s ridiculous. Helen could sit there and berate him for an hour each week and he’d still sit there happily.

With that thought in mind, he paid for his dinner and left the Continental. Tomorrow, he’ll come back in the early morning. Nap for a bit, then take a contract or two.

He wonders if it’s his obsession with Helen that will keep him in New York or his aversion to returning to his empty home after having that conversation. Neither seems to be a particularly healthy choice but he accepts it nonetheless.

He drives to her house and tries not to think of it as home.

He knows that something is wrong the moment he sees the house.

Helen is energy conscious. She rarely leaves a room without turning out the light. And right now, it is past her bedtime and the kitchen light is on.

He stops the car for a moment, just outside of her house, wondering if he’ll see a shadow move. Maybe he’s being paranoid. Maybe she just got up for water.

But nothing moves.

John throws the car in park. Normally, he’d hide the car a few blocks down and walk back to her house, but he doesn’t care. Quickly, he unlatches the glovebox to pull out his gun. He doesn’t even check it as he hurries out of his car.

The door is shut but the lock has been picked open. And not by him. No, whoever had done this didn’t have the skill to leave no marks in the metal. It was a rough, haggard job. And it was left unlocked.

Fuck.

He opens the door, gun-raised.

His head seems to be screaming a chorus of no, no, no, no, no, no as he clears the kitchen. He should clear the entire first floor, but his fear is outweighing his senses.

Emotional mind Helen would call it.

Her bed is empty but slept in. It wasn’t made and it looked as though she had thrashed about.

Someone had taken her from her bed.

He was shaking.

John was unsure if it was rage or fear that was pounding through him right now, but someone was going to pay.

A phone rings and it takes John a moment to recognize it as his own.

The screen has her name. Her work cell.

John accepts the call and puts the phone to his ear.

“Hello, John.” The voice is male. He doesn’t recognize it but there is a slight accent that he can’t quite place.

“Where is she?” He asks trying not to sound as desperate as he feels.

“Safe. For now.”

“Put her on the phone.”

“I’m afraid Miss Kingston has been sedated for the time being.”

“If you’ve hurt her…”

“I believe that now is not the time for you to be making threats.” His unknown opponent interrupts.

John tries to control himself. He can’t act until he knows more. The disgust pours from his voice as he forces himself to ask, “What do you want?”

“Very good.”

John closes his eyes and tries to focus on what it will feel like when he guts this man alive.

“Lorenzo D’Antonio will be in New York from tomorrow night through Monday.”

John can already tell where this is going. Lorenzo D’Antonio was the Camorra’s current leader. He held a seat at the High Table which made him virtually untouchable. No contract could be taken out against him or the Continental, and the High Table, would respond with force. To be caught even conspiring was to be dead.

“And you want him killed.” John finished.

“Not just Lorenzo. His heirs, as well.”

John let out a noise of disbelief. With Lorenzo dead, followed by his children, the Camorra would collapse.

Christ.

John had never given a flying fuck about Continental politics. He followed their rules to gain their services but this…

“And you’ll let her go?”

“Right into your waiting arms.” The man taunted.

John felt his nails digging into his palm as he struggled to maintain what little control he had left. “I want proof that she’s all right.”

“Fine.”

The line drops.

#this is a niche piece #but it is so fucking fun to write #john wick #helen wick #pre-john wick chapter one #pre- john wick #helen x john wick #john x helen wick #baba yaga #the boogeyman #john wick fanfics #john wick fanfic #john wick fanfiction #otp: daisy. of course #otp: daisy #otp: your best friend

[nvrissa]

hello laid ease and furries ( u know who u are )......hahaha....are u ready for this ? zimzalabim ! my name is xan ( she/her pronouns ) and my laptop has been broken for a good 3 years now i have to use an onscreen keyboard so if u see me typing for 20000 years on discord only to send u a single sentence u know whats up x JSDBJWBJW here is the intro....im really winging this no one call me out for that WOOO....tw: medication, mental health, body image ? perhaps just to be safe <3

ok ! so im not gonna talk too much abt family stuff bc yuno and i are doing the collab of the century here and art takes time people ! JSBDJBWDJW but so u get a good idea...i will write a little abt it lets get it 

so the kwons were two of the biggest faces in hollywood ( and tbh they are still considered icons / hollywood royalty no matter how old they get they stay #Relevant ) think bradgelina ! literally everyone knows who the kwons if u dont u probably live under a rock /: 

their parents are very into the fame thing...so when it came to their kids ( nari and wolfe ) they SUPER pushed the famous life onto them, really expecting both of them to be just as obsessed and enamored by the public. idk if u guys ever say that vid of gigi and bella hadid before they were huge were their mom was pressuring them both to get into modeling and to stay skinny and to be stars etc....it was kinda like that !

so narissa, being the first born, really just internalized that shit...like imagine being told ever since u were a baby that fame and status and ur last name are wildly important and not being able to remember a time when u werent being watched by cameras / a third party ( the public ) bc that was her life ! nari has....no experience as to what life is like without cameras and without having to create this image of herself that ppl are gonna be into 

obviously that’s NOT normal....and it had it’s toll on her /: as a kid she grew up so fast like u know those kids that seem so mature and wise for their age ? that was nari. she always had two versions of herself: inside nari vs outside nari. she was so good at being good just bc she knew what stuff to express and what stuff to keep inside ( spoiler alert: most of it was kept in x )  

she is still very much desperate to please her parents despite it all /: i feel like for a long time she kinda excepted and agreed that fame is everything ( hence why shes known for using her last name to get her places ) but shes starting to realize just how FUCKED it all is and just how much it’s messed her up so stay tuned for more fun !

ok so career stuff ! nari started off as a child model bc she was um super cute and super good at knowing what to do / not freaking out in front of cameras <3 but she was always obsessed with actors ! she used to sit in front of the tv for hours legit study and memorize ppls mannerisms and various movie lines.. she was literally always just quoting random lines / imitating various actors so often her parents were like ok word go act !    

she landed her first role at 12 and it was a pretty huge role as a lead chara in a mini television series that revolved around a cast of kids ( think stranger things but not plot wise just how some of the mains were kids ) with zero acting experience before hand ... so it was pretty clear to the media nari got the spot bc she was a kwon ! there was a bunch of controversy around the show before it came out but once it was released...there was no denying nari had talent

after that it was just a whirlwind of acting doors opening up for her. everyone wanted nari bc of her last name and all the attention that came from it, not to mention every director wanted to be The One that helped narissa kwon become one of the most famous actresses of the 21st century. most of the time she was getting cast for selfish reasons but nari never realized it /: she was just happy to be acting bc it really was like therapy for her to become different ppl

flash forward to age 15 when narissa was finally diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and was prescribed meds to help ! it was actually a director from a movie she was working on that suggested to her parents nari might be struggling after witnessing her have a panic attack on set. not wanting a scandal, her parents agreed it was best to get her “help” which included pills and weekly therapy ! 

so nari actually didnt mind it too much tbh she HAD been struggling for a while she just assumed her anxiety was normal and just like something all famous ppl were dealing with but that wasnt the case. she was hesitant to open up to her therapist just bc she was still obsessed with this idea of inside nari vs outside nari, and she was very scared to cross that line so it took....years of sessions to build up that trust

as she got older though and as she got more famous, everyone just assumed she was better. she was more famous and loved by the day, she had become a chanel ambassador ( thank u jennie x ), her interviews on youtube always brought in record views, she’d started in plenty of movies critics agreed would become cult classics, her social medias were nearing kardashian level in terms of followers: everything was on track....

....except nari had actually never been more unstable. she had become so dependent on her meds she couldnt go anywhere or talk to anyone without popping a few in. all the watching eyes were starting to make her paranoid, not to mention the pressure from her parents ( who couldn’t be happier with nari being so famous ) was at its all time high. she had been nominated for an oscar at 21 and everyone was expecting her to win...and then she didnt

narissa kwon famously fainted at the 2018 oscars after it was announced she had lost the award. her actual fainting wasnt caught on camera or televised, but it WAS witnessed by some of the most relevant names and faces in hollywood who were in that room. the scandal took the media by storm, the hashtag #getwellnarissa trending for over 42 hours until a statement was released she had fainted bc of dehydration and other undisclosed causes and that she was okay & currently taking it easy at home surrounded by family 

in reality it was the abuse of her medication as well as all the stress, but when your last name is kwon manipulating the press is as simple as making the right phone call. unfortunately for nari and her parents, the article about the brat pack came out a week later, and there was no manipulating that source /:

for narissa, it was all a wake up call. she decided to go off her anxiety meds altogether. after falling out with the brat pack she spent that year trying to figure out who she was separate from her fame and her last name. despite some offers from a few casting directors ( surprisingly some people still wanted her despite the scandals bc she was still a kwon, after all ) narissa rejected every role except one in a coming of age indie movie that explores womanhood and mental health as well as strained relationships with mothers. the movie is set to release sometime mid august hehe (~:

she agreed to come to milan to reunite with the brat pack bc she’s still searching for herself ! nari figures the people who quite literally grew up with her might give her some answers......not to mention there is still a part of her who is desperate to reclaim the image and status she had before everything fell apart </3    

PERSONALITY/TIDBITS

narissa is....complicated to say the least. growing up in front of the cameras and in a family who prioritized fame and outside opinions of you as the most important thing, she is quite literally desperate for praise and approval. because she legit has no idea what parts of her are real and what parts of her she’s created for her public persona, she often looks for understanding in others!! shes very very good at analyzing people and understanding people in the hopes that its gonna make her better at analyzing herself, but to no avail. 

libra sun capricorn moon !! THIS is super accurate and telling if u wanna read but i kinda just summarized it in the last bullet

she is such a perfectionist with everything she does and a bit of a control freak in the sense that if she’s not the one doing something, she doesnt have faith whatever that is will be able to live up to her unrealistic standards. directors are often concerted with nari bc whenever she gets big roles.....she is so hard on herself, often asking for take after take bc she monitors every little thing abt her expression or her movements. she’s often left frustrated and disappointed with herself bc again, her standards are SUPER unrealistic ):

she’s relatively sweet!! growing up with the brat pack they probably knew her as the life of the party, very bubbly, confident, and very easy to have fun with as long as you’re being tolerable. however, she can get kind of opinionated at times so it’s very hard for you to gain her trust and respect back if you lose it. she’s also prone to random mood swings / periods of isolation, but whenever she returns its with a big smile and a soft voice assuring you everything is okay 

very good at lying and deceiving ppl but she hardly ever does it on purpose ( unless her publicists asks her too ). she’s carried this persona / public image of herself curated for consumption from others for so long, sometimes she has no idea when she’s being sincere or if she’s just convincing herself she’s being sincere. most of the time she only deceives other people about herself. she can come across as kind of elusive because of this ( think daisy from gatsby’s perspective ) but it’s not on purpose. she just legit has no true sense of self isnt that sexy?

speaking of sex. JWDBJWBDJWBD she also uses that as a coping mechanism / a weird affirmation that yes, she IS wanted by others and yes she IS seen as someone beautiful and that she IS something to be consumed by others ( like i said in my tags....male fantasies male fantasies ) but then at the same time she feels guilty abt this and so unsatisfied and disgusted at how she’s living her life as an object / manifestation of other people’s projections rather than as a normal person...rip </3 its a cycle

ever since her relationship with micah that was so hated by the public it actually ruined and ended their relationship, nari has been too scared to publicly have a relationship again. the media seems to love seeing her on casual dates with other stars, but not to see her tied down to one person, as that kind of “damages” this super accessible persona she’s put out ( think idols and why they cant date )  

she loves poetry, french music, all of marilyn monroe and audrey hepburn’s movies, nonfiction essays abt womanhood and identity, anything chanel, is particularly fond of silk dresses but is partial to velvet as well, wears lacy bralettes under everything bc it makes her a little more confident, actually prefers large parties to small ones because small gatherings are more personal therefore give her more anxiety, would only eat fruit and drink champagne if she could live like that, doesn’t know how to swim so she’s scared of the ocean as well as the dark, used to study ballet as a kid and misses it terribly, doesn’t know how to drive and isn’t planning to learn, can be materialistic at times, is probably an introvert masquerading as an extrovert for 22 years now, the only movies she cant stand are westerns, loves to travel but is scared of flying, doesn’t drink coffee, and is allergic to nuts. 

last but most important fact about narissa is that she loves her brother wolfe more than anything in this world so messing with him is the only way nari is bound to 100% hate you. she can bully him all she wants ( ex. starting very real rumors he IS in fact a furry ) but no one else is aloud to actually be mean to him or she will kill you

also very random but i had a hc that when she was 6 and her pet cat jinx died she caused enough fuss at home her parents actually made it a national holiday in about thirteen different states. the anniversary of this death is december 4th and yes . the brat pack better mourn jinx with nari every year......

pls spare plots im sorry this is so long.....JBDJBWJDBWJBWDJBJ i promise it will be worth it also im sensitive and very small ... how can u say no ? 

#bratsintro #╰ ♡ . 𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝒇𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝒇𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒆𝒔 ── ooc ! #yes this tag is inspired by the margaret atwood quote....bc i am Literally haunted by it #so is nari x #also this gif ? inspired by her furry brother<3 #this intro is a whole mess pls . plot with me anyway ? #THIS IS RIDICULOUSLY LONG HOLY SJBWJBJWBDJW yea i...am so sorry oy my god

[songketalliance]

A Hairy Affair: Coming to Terms With Being Hairy As A Woman

by Manisha Dhalani

I find myself in awe of actresses who choose to wear very little clothes on screen, revealing their flawless bodies – no scars, no stretch marks, and of course, no bodily hair.

Life, however, has supposedly never been that kind to me. As a child, I was always referred to as a gorilla by the boys in school for being the hairy Indian nerd that I have always been (and still am).

My hair was also quite the subject of concern for my immediate family members. It was not normal.

On my eighteenth birthday, having already moved to Singapore for a year, my sister decided to give me the best birthday present she could think of – a waxing appointment. Instead of joy and happiness at turning another year older, there I was, lying down in some room with soothing music (think spa treatment), a therapist applying wax on my skin, only to yank it away at my skin to get rid of all the hair on my arms and legs.

Some birthday.

From that day on, I have only been given repeated reminders of how I should get rid of all the hair on my arms and legs. People often ask me why I don’t wear dresses or skirts. As much as “I don’t like” was the answer this tomboy chose to give, the truth was clearly a hairier affair. I have always been lazy to groom myself, and I wasn’t going to jump head on to get my skin ripped off every time I had to dress up.

I rather simply not attend functions or social gatherings that required me to “be a girl”.

I look at how women are depicted in movies and despite being impressed, I get angry. Where are the hairy women? Why are the models in leg shaving cream ads hairless? Why can’t a woman have hair? What’s with the obsession to bare it all?

It didn’t help that I have sensitive skin to begin with. After every waxing appointment that I had to endure, because society says so, I would suffer for days. My skin would turn tomato-red and I often had the heart to get a straight-jacket to stop myself from scratching the already sensitive skin. I have, successfully, sourced for an alternative that doesn’t hurt so much – but it’s only found in Singapore.

And I don’t live in Singapore anymore, which means less waxing appointments, i.e. more hair.

Whenever I’m in Brunei I see people giving me disgusted looks. Years ago, I was always sceptical. I would have regular waxing appointments for my arms so nobody would know how hairy I could get at full-capacity. I was conscious that maybe a man would never find me attractive if I was hairier than him. I even brought this up to a guy I was set-up with by my family and he, without pause, replied, “Oh God, please shave your whole body. You shouldn’t have hair, you’re a woman.”

I dropped him like a sack of hot potatoes.

Clearly, I’ve survived the turmoil. I think I’ve gained enough confidence in me to not give two hoots about the stares and raised eyebrows at my extensively hairy arms and legs.

And I owe the life-changing turn of events to my best friend. We were in the car one day, and the topic of insecurities about dressing up came up. I told her that as much as I do want to look good sometimes, I am extremely lazy. I would like to wax or shave if I had a legit date to go to or an event truly called for wearing a dress that had to show my legs, but I could not be bothered. I proceeded to explain how I felt slightly incompetent to be someone's wife due to my lack of external attributes. I don’t know how to apply make-up, I hate shopping, and again, I am a hairy woman.

Being my best friend, she laughed at me first. And then she said told me something that I never thought would come from the baby of our group of friends. Having been married and delivered a beautiful baby girl in the last few years, she lifted her skirt and pointed at her legs.

“Man, I’ve been married for so long. I have a child. I work. I take care of my household. You think my husband cares about my leg hair after I do all that for our family?”

I smiled. It was the reassurance I needed. I felt blessed for my best friend who had found someone who loved her regardless of all superficial issues. She is and will forever continue to be a beautiful person because of who she is, not what she looks like.

“Ditto,” she said.

Today, I think I’m out of that fear of what someone else would think about the hair on my body. Sure, it’s not normal; women aren’t usually seen with full growth of hair on their bodies.

What I do feel abnormal about nowadays is the fact that, at 30-years-old, my worth is determined by the hair on my arms and legs. My being a woman should not depend on how much hair I have on my body, should it? I will wax my legs or arms, or whatever, when I feel like it. I will look a certain way when I see the need to.

I no longer think that having hair on my body makes me any less of a woman than I already am.

And it has been four months since I went for my last waxing appointment.

Hair is not disgusting. It is an insulation. I’m also beginning to think it keeps me protected from potential douchebags who can only view a woman as whatever is depicted on screen and in beauty products.

You go wax your arms, bruh. Let me see you handle the pain.

by Manisha Dhalani

Interested in contributing to Songket Alliance? E-mail us at [email protected] with your ideas and article.

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#Manisha Dhalani #theme: month of women #brunei #writing #songket alliance #gender and sexuality

[emlydunstan]

Sober and Still Addicted: Compulsive Behavior in Recovery

Seems I need to make amends.You’re supposed to be reading right now about how after we put the dope down, that destructive behavior that went along with it often continues, our addiction manifesting itself in cunning and baffling new ways.But I just can’t seem to start writing.There’s always one more cigarette to smoke, cup of coffee to drink. One more level to get past on this new game on my phone. My side business is pet care and there’s always one more dog I can add to the walk, my mild hernia screaming as I mush my way towards a serious medical condition. My fingers are wrecked, too, from gnawing on the cuticles. Maybe after one more Band-Aid I’ll be able to sit down and type. I really do want to share all the information I’ve gathered about how most people in recovery find themselves still struggling with these sorts of “replacement” addictions.But as a hobby I make models and I just scored this kickass new car online, so I’d better try to finish at least one from the perpetual batch before the new one gets delivered.And even if I do get around to writing this article, what the hell sort of message would I be conveying anyway? Here I am two years sober (November was my sobriety birthday), and still feel practically paralyzed by addiction. Cigarette, coffee, dog walk, repeat. Once again I have found my life bordering on unmanageability, my health suffering in the grips of these persistent new vices.Yes, as I’ve said, there have been health complications and they are directly related to some of these addictive tendencies which I simply refuse to give up.At least not any time soon.And certainly not today.After all, I’ve got this...thing to write, for God’s sake. How can I expect to work, or get anything done for that matter, if I don’t give in and continue to feed the beast? Not only would I be in serious discomfort, but you, dear reader, would have nothing more to read.No, the best course of action is for me to continue with these behaviors in order to keep everything moving along. And look at this, I seem to have begun after all.Fantastic.I knew I couldn’t be the only one struggling with these issues and that if I just opened my mouth in the meeting rooms, others would feel comfortable sharing their own experiences. There are plenty of us who discovered that even though the dope was laid to rest, that fiendish mentality kept on kicking, keeping our sobriety from being as happy, joyous and free as is so often promised.Erin was a cinch to relate to. Like me, she was anxiously awaiting her recent Amazon delivery, jonesing for that cardboard smirk to appear at her doorstep. “Oh, I love that smiley face,” she confessed with a shiver. “I always open the Amazon box first. I get a little rush.”A true addict, Erin now chases that little rush like she once chased her high.At 42 years old with over two decades of sobriety, Erin is now addicted to online shopping. “It used to be with credit cards, like from Target. I’d go in and wouldn’t leave until hundreds of dollars later. But now I’ve found that I can sit on my phone during a boring work meeting and just swipe right.” Then to clarify my obvious confusion she added, “You know, one-swipe shopping?”Realizing that she could swipe everything into her digital cart, from paper towels to yoga pants, Erin started a steady flow of those smiles coming to her door. “Packages come every day, every other day,” she told me, “because I get groceries and household supplies. And I rent my clothes, so those are always coming. But it’s nice with Amazon because you can set it up where every month they’ll send you kitty litter and toilet paper. So you don’t have to think about it. They just show up.”Those are Erin’s favorite packages, the ones that surprise her. “I make sure not to track the deliveries so when one comes with my name on it and I don’t know what it is - I’m like, holy crap, it’s Christmas!”Of course with that kind of mindfulness, or lack thereof, it wasn't long before Erin lost track of her spending as well. “I was always so careful, never buying anything too fancy, thinking it's just $20. But then I was doing that like 50 times a week.”These numbers would increase in times of stress; Erin escaped into dot com bazaars to shop herself numb.In order to cover her increasingly reckless purchasing, Erin began manipulating the household budget, often lying to her husband of 15 years about where the money was being channeled. But then one month the debt had bloated to the point where she could no longer hide it.Her household allowance of $1,500 clocked in closer to $5,000.“The thing is, we don’t do credit card debt,” she told me. “My husband has had to bail me out a couple of times. The only time he really gets mad at me is about the shopping problem and how it’s preventing us from doing things like going on vacations or saving for retirement.”Inevitably our spouses are affected by our compulsive behaviors, even after we’ve gotten clean and sober.Tom, 41 and with 2 years clean, kept his newfound gambling habit to himself. “If my wife ever knew what’s really been going on, she’d be pretty surprised,” he said of his finances. “Yeah, there’d be problems.”Not long after getting the opioids out of his system, Tom found that an old habit had come back with a vengeance. He’d been a light gambler since his 20’s, and now his betting activity suddenly increased by as much as 500%.“Well I had all this extra cash because I wasn’t spending it on the pills. Near the end of my using I’d been dishing out around $1,600 a week.”To play it safe, so to speak, Tom worked out a deal with his bookie, recruiting new bets for a cut of those winnings. The idea was that he would bet only with the money he made from this arrangement, thus flipping it. “So I wasn’t spending ‘our’ money, my family’s, which was perfect.”Perfect, that is, as long as those bets he helped set up won - and he didn’t get carried away by the excitement of the game.“Football is my thing,” he said with excitement. “Nothing beats the feeling of your team being ahead. And when you have money down on it, you’re a part of that team. So wherever I am and a game is going on, I’m in it all the way!”Here was Tom’s Amazon smile. His cigarette and coffee. That thrilling little charge to help him through the day.Tom was consumed.“Then there was one bad week where everyone lost - so when it came time to cover my bets, there was just nothing there. I had no choice but to borrow from the family account.”He’d done it before, always replacing any withdrawals before his wife could catch on. “Only this happened during the same week our property taxes were due - and we were going to be short $3,000.”Panicked and humiliated, Tom confided in a cousin who he knew would be able to cover the loan. “But that was too close,” he told me, “and that’s when I quit. The day after that I asked (my therapist) for help.”At the time, Tom was still taking part in a biweekly group and one-on-one counseling for the opioid abuse. He realized that his best bet was to start treating the gambling addiction as seriously as his substance use disorder.“Very rarely, if ever, have I seen anyone come in with just one significant disorder going on,” said Christy Waters, MD, of Bright Heart Health in San Francisco. Waters’ specialties are addiction psychiatry and addiction medicine, and she is in recovery herself. “For a long time there was this sort of romanticizing of recovery. Addicts thought and were told that if they could just stop using, all would be well, not understanding that the drugs were really just a small part of what was really going on.”“Our liquor was just a symptom,” echoes the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Big Book explains that the substance that we thought was the root of our problem was, in fact, just an indication of that problem.“A lot of patients come in just hanging on by their fingernails,” Waters continued. “They’ve stopped using and they’re depressed or they’re anxious or they’re just plain miserable. And now they’re acting all this out in completely new ways. Maybe they’re smoking a lot, or overeating, or whatever it takes to get that ‘lift.’ At first they might think, ‘Look, at least I’m not doing heroin, so what’s the big deal?’ But then they see how their quality of life is suffering. And that’s not the promise of recovery, is it? The promise is that your life will get better.”AA and other 12-step programs’ suggested solution is for us to “launch out on a course of vigorous action” to face and exorcise “the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.” In other words, take the steps. The hope is that after all of our personal inventories and amends and prayers, we are released from the torment that used to compel us to drink or use; we become free of the behavior once and for all.This is a solution in Dr. Waters' world as well. But it's not the only one.“We meet so many people in recovery who wind up with a dual diagnosis. They’ve been living with a disorder for years, sometimes their whole lives, but it remained undiagnosed beneath the substance abuse,” said Waters. “Maybe they have post-traumatic stress. Or ADHD. Then finally in treatment they realize, ‘Oh my God, all this time I've been self-medicating?’”Or shopping themselves into smothering debt?Or gambling away their marriage and home?Was she saying that just as our using was a symptom of a larger issue, the same can hold true for these “replacement” behaviors?“Absolutely,” Waters confirmed. “It’s important to always approach the disease of addiction with a much bigger lens. For instance, we now know that 80% of women who abuse substances also struggle with a mood disorder - and that’s even before the first ‘fix’.”Intrigued, I brought up the question with Erin during our follow up interview. I knew she had worked the steps of NA with great success, so much so that she was now applying a 12-step program to her shopping problem. But was therapy a part of her solution? Could the shopping possibly be linked to something else? “That’s funny you should ask that,” Erin said. “I actually made an appointment with a therapist not too long ago. I'm going in later today.”A conflict between Erin and her son had come to a head and triggered the compulsive behavior; Erin’s online shopping increased exponentially once again in response.“I used to have problems with PTSD,” she confessed, “and I think this stuff with (my son) might’ve stirred that back up.”For Tom’s gambling habit, however, the solution, or at least the path leading to it, was not so clear. By the time I followed up with him he had stopped searching for help altogether. Though his check-ins with the rehab center continued, his therapeutic work focused only on his recovery from opioid addiction. He was back to placing bets weekly.“I quit for two or three weeks,” he said, “handling just the bookings. I was able to look at where I went wrong - and now I know the warning signs. As long as I don’t use my own money, I’m okay. And as long as I keep the whole thing as entertainment there’s not a problem.”But surely there had to be other activities Tom enjoyed, things he liked to do that weren’t as risky?“Not once you know the rush you can get from gambling,” he said. “And the pills are out of the picture for good, so this is sort of all I have left.” As for me and my own vices, the cigarettes and coffee and busy-work in between, I imagine the doctor will read me the riot act on Monday morning. I have an appointment to get this little hernia checked out and when he inquires about my lifestyle, I plan on telling it to him straight. For over 20 years I was trapped in the grip of drug addiction and I thought I was in the clear once I was released. But as my eyes open wider, I see the true nature of this beast; I still have some shackles holding me captive.But I think I just found the keys.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 https://www.thefix.com/sober-and-still-addicted-compulsive-behavior-recovery

[alexdmorgan30]

Sober and Still Addicted: Compulsive Behavior in Recovery

Seems I need to make amends.You’re supposed to be reading right now about how after we put the dope down, that destructive behavior that went along with it often continues, our addiction manifesting itself in cunning and baffling new ways.But I just can’t seem to start writing.There’s always one more cigarette to smoke, cup of coffee to drink. One more level to get past on this new game on my phone. My side business is pet care and there’s always one more dog I can add to the walk, my mild hernia screaming as I mush my way towards a serious medical condition. My fingers are wrecked, too, from gnawing on the cuticles. Maybe after one more Band-Aid I’ll be able to sit down and type. I really do want to share all the information I’ve gathered about how most people in recovery find themselves still struggling with these sorts of “replacement” addictions.But as a hobby I make models and I just scored this kickass new car online, so I’d better try to finish at least one from the perpetual batch before the new one gets delivered.And even if I do get around to writing this article, what the hell sort of message would I be conveying anyway? Here I am two years sober (November was my sobriety birthday), and still feel practically paralyzed by addiction. Cigarette, coffee, dog walk, repeat. Once again I have found my life bordering on unmanageability, my health suffering in the grips of these persistent new vices.Yes, as I’ve said, there have been health complications and they are directly related to some of these addictive tendencies which I simply refuse to give up.At least not any time soon.And certainly not today.After all, I’ve got this...thing to write, for God’s sake. How can I expect to work, or get anything done for that matter, if I don’t give in and continue to feed the beast? Not only would I be in serious discomfort, but you, dear reader, would have nothing more to read.No, the best course of action is for me to continue with these behaviors in order to keep everything moving along. And look at this, I seem to have begun after all.Fantastic.I knew I couldn’t be the only one struggling with these issues and that if I just opened my mouth in the meeting rooms, others would feel comfortable sharing their own experiences. There are plenty of us who discovered that even though the dope was laid to rest, that fiendish mentality kept on kicking, keeping our sobriety from being as happy, joyous and free as is so often promised.Erin was a cinch to relate to. Like me, she was anxiously awaiting her recent Amazon delivery, jonesing for that cardboard smirk to appear at her doorstep. “Oh, I love that smiley face,” she confessed with a shiver. “I always open the Amazon box first. I get a little rush.”A true addict, Erin now chases that little rush like she once chased her high.At 42 years old with over two decades of sobriety, Erin is now addicted to online shopping. “It used to be with credit cards, like from Target. I’d go in and wouldn’t leave until hundreds of dollars later. But now I’ve found that I can sit on my phone during a boring work meeting and just swipe right.” Then to clarify my obvious confusion she added, “You know, one-swipe shopping?”Realizing that she could swipe everything into her digital cart, from paper towels to yoga pants, Erin started a steady flow of those smiles coming to her door. “Packages come every day, every other day,” she told me, “because I get groceries and household supplies. And I rent my clothes, so those are always coming. But it’s nice with Amazon because you can set it up where every month they’ll send you kitty litter and toilet paper. So you don’t have to think about it. They just show up.”Those are Erin’s favorite packages, the ones that surprise her. “I make sure not to track the deliveries so when one comes with my name on it and I don’t know what it is - I’m like, holy crap, it’s Christmas!”Of course with that kind of mindfulness, or lack thereof, it wasn't long before Erin lost track of her spending as well. “I was always so careful, never buying anything too fancy, thinking it's just $20. But then I was doing that like 50 times a week.”These numbers would increase in times of stress; Erin escaped into dot com bazaars to shop herself numb.In order to cover her increasingly reckless purchasing, Erin began manipulating the household budget, often lying to her husband of 15 years about where the money was being channeled. But then one month the debt had bloated to the point where she could no longer hide it.Her household allowance of $1,500 clocked in closer to $5,000.“The thing is, we don’t do credit card debt,” she told me. “My husband has had to bail me out a couple of times. The only time he really gets mad at me is about the shopping problem and how it’s preventing us from doing things like going on vacations or saving for retirement.”Inevitably our spouses are affected by our compulsive behaviors, even after we’ve gotten clean and sober.Tom, 41 and with 2 years clean, kept his newfound gambling habit to himself. “If my wife ever knew what’s really been going on, she’d be pretty surprised,” he said of his finances. “Yeah, there’d be problems.”Not long after getting the opioids out of his system, Tom found that an old habit had come back with a vengeance. He’d been a light gambler since his 20’s, and now his betting activity suddenly increased by as much as 500%.“Well I had all this extra cash because I wasn’t spending it on the pills. Near the end of my using I’d been dishing out around $1,600 a week.”To play it safe, so to speak, Tom worked out a deal with his bookie, recruiting new bets for a cut of those winnings. The idea was that he would bet only with the money he made from this arrangement, thus flipping it. “So I wasn’t spending ‘our’ money, my family’s, which was perfect.”Perfect, that is, as long as those bets he helped set up won - and he didn’t get carried away by the excitement of the game.“Football is my thing,” he said with excitement. “Nothing beats the feeling of your team being ahead. And when you have money down on it, you’re a part of that team. So wherever I am and a game is going on, I’m in it all the way!”Here was Tom’s Amazon smile. His cigarette and coffee. That thrilling little charge to help him through the day.Tom was consumed.“Then there was one bad week where everyone lost - so when it came time to cover my bets, there was just nothing there. I had no choice but to borrow from the family account.”He’d done it before, always replacing any withdrawals before his wife could catch on. “Only this happened during the same week our property taxes were due - and we were going to be short $3,000.”Panicked and humiliated, Tom confided in a cousin who he knew would be able to cover the loan. “But that was too close,” he told me, “and that’s when I quit. The day after that I asked (my therapist) for help.”At the time, Tom was still taking part in a biweekly group and one-on-one counseling for the opioid abuse. He realized that his best bet was to start treating the gambling addiction as seriously as his substance use disorder.“Very rarely, if ever, have I seen anyone come in with just one significant disorder going on,” said Christy Waters, MD, of Bright Heart Health in San Francisco. Waters’ specialties are addiction psychiatry and addiction medicine, and she is in recovery herself. “For a long time there was this sort of romanticizing of recovery. Addicts thought and were told that if they could just stop using, all would be well, not understanding that the drugs were really just a small part of what was really going on.”“Our liquor was just a symptom,” echoes the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Big Book explains that the substance that we thought was the root of our problem was, in fact, just an indication of that problem.“A lot of patients come in just hanging on by their fingernails,” Waters continued. “They’ve stopped using and they’re depressed or they’re anxious or they’re just plain miserable. And now they’re acting all this out in completely new ways. Maybe they’re smoking a lot, or overeating, or whatever it takes to get that ‘lift.’ At first they might think, ‘Look, at least I’m not doing heroin, so what’s the big deal?’ But then they see how their quality of life is suffering. And that’s not the promise of recovery, is it? The promise is that your life will get better.”AA and other 12-step programs’ suggested solution is for us to “launch out on a course of vigorous action” to face and exorcise “the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.” In other words, take the steps. The hope is that after all of our personal inventories and amends and prayers, we are released from the torment that used to compel us to drink or use; we become free of the behavior once and for all.This is a solution in Dr. Waters' world as well. But it's not the only one.“We meet so many people in recovery who wind up with a dual diagnosis. They’ve been living with a disorder for years, sometimes their whole lives, but it remained undiagnosed beneath the substance abuse,” said Waters. “Maybe they have post-traumatic stress. Or ADHD. Then finally in treatment they realize, ‘Oh my God, all this time I've been self-medicating?’”Or shopping themselves into smothering debt?Or gambling away their marriage and home?Was she saying that just as our using was a symptom of a larger issue, the same can hold true for these “replacement” behaviors?“Absolutely,” Waters confirmed. “It’s important to always approach the disease of addiction with a much bigger lens. For instance, we now know that 80% of women who abuse substances also struggle with a mood disorder - and that’s even before the first ‘fix’.”Intrigued, I brought up the question with Erin during our follow up interview. I knew she had worked the steps of NA with great success, so much so that she was now applying a 12-step program to her shopping problem. But was therapy a part of her solution? Could the shopping possibly be linked to something else? “That’s funny you should ask that,” Erin said. “I actually made an appointment with a therapist not too long ago. I'm going in later today.”A conflict between Erin and her son had come to a head and triggered the compulsive behavior; Erin’s online shopping increased exponentially once again in response.“I used to have problems with PTSD,” she confessed, “and I think this stuff with (my son) might’ve stirred that back up.”For Tom’s gambling habit, however, the solution, or at least the path leading to it, was not so clear. By the time I followed up with him he had stopped searching for help altogether. Though his check-ins with the rehab center continued, his therapeutic work focused only on his recovery from opioid addiction. He was back to placing bets weekly.“I quit for two or three weeks,” he said, “handling just the bookings. I was able to look at where I went wrong - and now I know the warning signs. As long as I don’t use my own money, I’m okay. And as long as I keep the whole thing as entertainment there’s not a problem.”But surely there had to be other activities Tom enjoyed, things he liked to do that weren’t as risky?“Not once you know the rush you can get from gambling,” he said. “And the pills are out of the picture for good, so this is sort of all I have left.” As for me and my own vices, the cigarettes and coffee and busy-work in between, I imagine the doctor will read me the riot act on Monday morning. I have an appointment to get this little hernia checked out and when he inquires about my lifestyle, I plan on telling it to him straight. For over 20 years I was trapped in the grip of drug addiction and I thought I was in the clear once I was released. But as my eyes open wider, I see the true nature of this beast; I still have some shackles holding me captive.But I think I just found the keys.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 http://bit.ly/2M8Aw1j

[pitz182]

Sober and Still Addicted: Compulsive Behavior in Recovery

Seems I need to make amends.You’re supposed to be reading right now about how after we put the dope down, that destructive behavior that went along with it often continues, our addiction manifesting itself in cunning and baffling new ways.But I just can’t seem to start writing.There’s always one more cigarette to smoke, cup of coffee to drink. One more level to get past on this new game on my phone. My side business is pet care and there’s always one more dog I can add to the walk, my mild hernia screaming as I mush my way towards a serious medical condition. My fingers are wrecked, too, from gnawing on the cuticles. Maybe after one more Band-Aid I’ll be able to sit down and type. I really do want to share all the information I’ve gathered about how most people in recovery find themselves still struggling with these sorts of “replacement” addictions.But as a hobby I make models and I just scored this kickass new car online, so I’d better try to finish at least one from the perpetual batch before the new one gets delivered.And even if I do get around to writing this article, what the hell sort of message would I be conveying anyway? Here I am two years sober (November was my sobriety birthday), and still feel practically paralyzed by addiction. Cigarette, coffee, dog walk, repeat. Once again I have found my life bordering on unmanageability, my health suffering in the grips of these persistent new vices.Yes, as I’ve said, there have been health complications and they are directly related to some of these addictive tendencies which I simply refuse to give up.At least not any time soon.And certainly not today.After all, I’ve got this...thing to write, for God’s sake. How can I expect to work, or get anything done for that matter, if I don’t give in and continue to feed the beast? Not only would I be in serious discomfort, but you, dear reader, would have nothing more to read.No, the best course of action is for me to continue with these behaviors in order to keep everything moving along. And look at this, I seem to have begun after all.Fantastic.I knew I couldn’t be the only one struggling with these issues and that if I just opened my mouth in the meeting rooms, others would feel comfortable sharing their own experiences. There are plenty of us who discovered that even though the dope was laid to rest, that fiendish mentality kept on kicking, keeping our sobriety from being as happy, joyous and free as is so often promised.Erin was a cinch to relate to. Like me, she was anxiously awaiting her recent Amazon delivery, jonesing for that cardboard smirk to appear at her doorstep. “Oh, I love that smiley face,” she confessed with a shiver. “I always open the Amazon box first. I get a little rush.”A true addict, Erin now chases that little rush like she once chased her high.At 42 years old with over two decades of sobriety, Erin is now addicted to online shopping. “It used to be with credit cards, like from Target. I’d go in and wouldn’t leave until hundreds of dollars later. But now I’ve found that I can sit on my phone during a boring work meeting and just swipe right.” Then to clarify my obvious confusion she added, “You know, one-swipe shopping?”Realizing that she could swipe everything into her digital cart, from paper towels to yoga pants, Erin started a steady flow of those smiles coming to her door. “Packages come every day, every other day,” she told me, “because I get groceries and household supplies. And I rent my clothes, so those are always coming. But it’s nice with Amazon because you can set it up where every month they’ll send you kitty litter and toilet paper. So you don’t have to think about it. They just show up.”Those are Erin’s favorite packages, the ones that surprise her. “I make sure not to track the deliveries so when one comes with my name on it and I don’t know what it is - I’m like, holy crap, it’s Christmas!”Of course with that kind of mindfulness, or lack thereof, it wasn't long before Erin lost track of her spending as well. “I was always so careful, never buying anything too fancy, thinking it's just $20. But then I was doing that like 50 times a week.”These numbers would increase in times of stress; Erin escaped into dot com bazaars to shop herself numb.In order to cover her increasingly reckless purchasing, Erin began manipulating the household budget, often lying to her husband of 15 years about where the money was being channeled. But then one month the debt had bloated to the point where she could no longer hide it.Her household allowance of $1,500 clocked in closer to $5,000.“The thing is, we don’t do credit card debt,” she told me. “My husband has had to bail me out a couple of times. The only time he really gets mad at me is about the shopping problem and how it’s preventing us from doing things like going on vacations or saving for retirement.”Inevitably our spouses are affected by our compulsive behaviors, even after we’ve gotten clean and sober.Tom, 41 and with 2 years clean, kept his newfound gambling habit to himself. “If my wife ever knew what’s really been going on, she’d be pretty surprised,” he said of his finances. “Yeah, there’d be problems.”Not long after getting the opioids out of his system, Tom found that an old habit had come back with a vengeance. He’d been a light gambler since his 20’s, and now his betting activity suddenly increased by as much as 500%.“Well I had all this extra cash because I wasn’t spending it on the pills. Near the end of my using I’d been dishing out around $1,600 a week.”To play it safe, so to speak, Tom worked out a deal with his bookie, recruiting new bets for a cut of those winnings. The idea was that he would bet only with the money he made from this arrangement, thus flipping it. “So I wasn’t spending ‘our’ money, my family’s, which was perfect.”Perfect, that is, as long as those bets he helped set up won - and he didn’t get carried away by the excitement of the game.“Football is my thing,” he said with excitement. “Nothing beats the feeling of your team being ahead. And when you have money down on it, you’re a part of that team. So wherever I am and a game is going on, I’m in it all the way!”Here was Tom’s Amazon smile. His cigarette and coffee. That thrilling little charge to help him through the day.Tom was consumed.“Then there was one bad week where everyone lost - so when it came time to cover my bets, there was just nothing there. I had no choice but to borrow from the family account.”He’d done it before, always replacing any withdrawals before his wife could catch on. “Only this happened during the same week our property taxes were due - and we were going to be short $3,000.”Panicked and humiliated, Tom confided in a cousin who he knew would be able to cover the loan. “But that was too close,” he told me, “and that’s when I quit. The day after that I asked (my therapist) for help.”At the time, Tom was still taking part in a biweekly group and one-on-one counseling for the opioid abuse. He realized that his best bet was to start treating the gambling addiction as seriously as his substance use disorder.“Very rarely, if ever, have I seen anyone come in with just one significant disorder going on,” said Christy Waters, MD, of Bright Heart Health in San Francisco. Waters’ specialties are addiction psychiatry and addiction medicine, and she is in recovery herself. “For a long time there was this sort of romanticizing of recovery. Addicts thought and were told that if they could just stop using, all would be well, not understanding that the drugs were really just a small part of what was really going on.”“Our liquor was just a symptom,” echoes the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Big Book explains that the substance that we thought was the root of our problem was, in fact, just an indication of that problem.“A lot of patients come in just hanging on by their fingernails,” Waters continued. “They’ve stopped using and they’re depressed or they’re anxious or they’re just plain miserable. And now they’re acting all this out in completely new ways. Maybe they’re smoking a lot, or overeating, or whatever it takes to get that ‘lift.’ At first they might think, ‘Look, at least I’m not doing heroin, so what’s the big deal?’ But then they see how their quality of life is suffering. And that’s not the promise of recovery, is it? The promise is that your life will get better.”AA and other 12-step programs’ suggested solution is for us to “launch out on a course of vigorous action” to face and exorcise “the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.” In other words, take the steps. The hope is that after all of our personal inventories and amends and prayers, we are released from the torment that used to compel us to drink or use; we become free of the behavior once and for all.This is a solution in Dr. Waters' world as well. But it's not the only one.“We meet so many people in recovery who wind up with a dual diagnosis. They’ve been living with a disorder for years, sometimes their whole lives, but it remained undiagnosed beneath the substance abuse,” said Waters. “Maybe they have post-traumatic stress. Or ADHD. Then finally in treatment they realize, ‘Oh my God, all this time I've been self-medicating?’”Or shopping themselves into smothering debt?Or gambling away their marriage and home?Was she saying that just as our using was a symptom of a larger issue, the same can hold true for these “replacement” behaviors?“Absolutely,” Waters confirmed. “It’s important to always approach the disease of addiction with a much bigger lens. For instance, we now know that 80% of women who abuse substances also struggle with a mood disorder - and that’s even before the first ‘fix’.”Intrigued, I brought up the question with Erin during our follow up interview. I knew she had worked the steps of NA with great success, so much so that she was now applying a 12-step program to her shopping problem. But was therapy a part of her solution? Could the shopping possibly be linked to something else? “That’s funny you should ask that,” Erin said. “I actually made an appointment with a therapist not too long ago. I'm going in later today.”A conflict between Erin and her son had come to a head and triggered the compulsive behavior; Erin’s online shopping increased exponentially once again in response.“I used to have problems with PTSD,” she confessed, “and I think this stuff with (my son) might’ve stirred that back up.”For Tom’s gambling habit, however, the solution, or at least the path leading to it, was not so clear. By the time I followed up with him he had stopped searching for help altogether. Though his check-ins with the rehab center continued, his therapeutic work focused only on his recovery from opioid addiction. He was back to placing bets weekly.“I quit for two or three weeks,” he said, “handling just the bookings. I was able to look at where I went wrong - and now I know the warning signs. As long as I don’t use my own money, I’m okay. And as long as I keep the whole thing as entertainment there’s not a problem.”But surely there had to be other activities Tom enjoyed, things he liked to do that weren’t as risky?“Not once you know the rush you can get from gambling,” he said. “And the pills are out of the picture for good, so this is sort of all I have left.” As for me and my own vices, the cigarettes and coffee and busy-work in between, I imagine the doctor will read me the riot act on Monday morning. I have an appointment to get this little hernia checked out and when he inquires about my lifestyle, I plan on telling it to him straight. For over 20 years I was trapped in the grip of drug addiction and I thought I was in the clear once I was released. But as my eyes open wider, I see the true nature of this beast; I still have some shackles holding me captive.But I think I just found the keys.

[foursprouthealth-blog]

4 Reasons Why "Be Yourself" Isn&#039;t BS Advice

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/health/4-reasons-why-be-yourself-isnt-bs-advice/

4 Reasons Why "Be Yourself" Isn't BS Advice

You never know your elevator pitch more clearly and concisely than when a customs officer interrogates you.

“What exactly is your work in America, Susan?”

“Well, I’m a confidence coach. I lead online programs helping people start side hustles and become comfortably more visible in their business. I’m also an author and columnist, preaching the transformative power of self-love. Because without it, you’re pretty much doomed.” (Smiley face).

The poor guy stamped my passport, a bit confused. I was coming back to New York from England, and in a rare moment of fatigued truth-telling, I just couldn’t dumb it down like I usually do, saying, “I have an online business,” or “I’m a writer.” Nope, this time, I spoke the truth. And he got me outta his hair, rapidly approving my entry and nodding for me to leave.

It felt like a mini victory.

It feels good to just be yourself sometimes, however silly or inappropriate… so why do we feel such pressure to blend in?

Here’s why it’s A-OK—and important!—to be you:

There is, and only ever will be, one you.

Think about your face. Your fingerprints. No one else in the world has the same ones. When you were made, the mold dissolved. So when your sweet little life is gone, over, finito … that’s it. Dust.

I can think of nothing more tragic than living a subdued, second-guessed half-life. Because there IS no second chance. Death is totally final. So to live, fully you is your only real obligation. Isn’t it?

EDITOR’S PICK

displayTitle

Your most unique features are probably your best.

When I saw a therapist a couple of years ago, I shared with him my fear about “being myself” online. That means just talking, sharing, and goofing around, the way I do with my friends in my videos, columns, and my weekly confidence injections that I send to my community by email. He said to me, “Do you think Beyoncé or Lady Gaga became Beyoncé and Lady Gaga by toning it down?”

What a question! What are you not letting the world see because it’s different, a bit disruptive, provocative, against the grain?

What makes you stand out makes you powerful.

I love how Dita Von Teese is known for her burlesque moves and style. Stars like Lizzo and Ashley Graham make the front pages of magazines because they’re advocates for self-love and size representation.

We love them because they love themselves. They are proud of their gifts and are courageous enough to share them with the world. Being yourself allows your art to flow and fill your life’s canvas beautifully and naturally.

You inspire others too.

Think about your role models. Whether they’re athletes, TV personalities, or authors, I bet they ain’t like anybody else. That why they stood out to you in the first place; whatever it is that you admire about them stands out. It’s important to show who you are too—the world needs your vibrancy. Interested in being seen more for who you are? You can check out my free training here.

Ask yourself—who might you be if you didn’t care what anyone else thought or said? Who would you become? How would that feel? Close your eyes and picture it fully. That’s who you really are—and it’s perfect.

Susie Moore is Greatist’s life coach columnist and a confidence coach in New York City. Sign up for free weekly wellness tips on her website and check back every Tuesday for her latest No Regrets column!

#Health

[foursprout-blog]

4 Reasons Why "Be Yourself" Isn&#039;t BS Advice

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/health/4-reasons-why-be-yourself-isnt-bs-advice/

4 Reasons Why "Be Yourself" Isn't BS Advice

You never know your elevator pitch more clearly and concisely than when a customs officer interrogates you.

“What exactly is your work in America, Susan?”

“Well, I’m a confidence coach. I lead online programs helping people start side hustles and become comfortably more visible in their business. I’m also an author and columnist, preaching the transformative power of self-love. Because without it, you’re pretty much doomed.” (Smiley face).

The poor guy stamped my passport, a bit confused. I was coming back to New York from England, and in a rare moment of fatigued truth-telling, I just couldn’t dumb it down like I usually do, saying, “I have an online business,” or “I’m a writer.” Nope, this time, I spoke the truth. And he got me outta his hair, rapidly approving my entry and nodding for me to leave.

It felt like a mini victory.

It feels good to just be yourself sometimes, however silly or inappropriate… so why do we feel such pressure to blend in?

Here’s why it’s A-OK—and important!—to be you:

There is, and only ever will be, one you.

Think about your face. Your fingerprints. No one else in the world has the same ones. When you were made, the mold dissolved. So when your sweet little life is gone, over, finito … that’s it. Dust.

I can think of nothing more tragic than living a subdued, second-guessed half-life. Because there IS no second chance. Death is totally final. So to live, fully you is your only real obligation. Isn’t it?

EDITOR’S PICK

displayTitle

Your most unique features are probably your best.

When I saw a therapist a couple of years ago, I shared with him my fear about “being myself” online. That means just talking, sharing, and goofing around, the way I do with my friends in my videos, columns, and my weekly confidence injections that I send to my community by email. He said to me, “Do you think Beyoncé or Lady Gaga became Beyoncé and Lady Gaga by toning it down?”

What a question! What are you not letting the world see because it’s different, a bit disruptive, provocative, against the grain?

What makes you stand out makes you powerful.

I love how Dita Von Teese is known for her burlesque moves and style. Stars like Lizzo and Ashley Graham make the front pages of magazines because they’re advocates for self-love and size representation.

We love them because they love themselves. They are proud of their gifts and are courageous enough to share them with the world. Being yourself allows your art to flow and fill your life’s canvas beautifully and naturally.

You inspire others too.

Think about your role models. Whether they’re athletes, TV personalities, or authors, I bet they ain’t like anybody else. That why they stood out to you in the first place; whatever it is that you admire about them stands out. It’s important to show who you are too—the world needs your vibrancy. Interested in being seen more for who you are? You can check out my free training here.

Ask yourself—who might you be if you didn’t care what anyone else thought or said? Who would you become? How would that feel? Close your eyes and picture it fully. That’s who you really are—and it’s perfect.

Susie Moore is Greatist’s life coach columnist and a confidence coach in New York City. Sign up for free weekly wellness tips on her website and check back every Tuesday for her latest No Regrets column!

#Health

[vcantu93]

Assignment #4

Part 1

2nd Face

Appears to be a middle aged Italian man. The stubble on his face and look in his eyes give the impression that he’s worked long hours. The width of his waist says the he’s most likely well fed, perhaps owns a restaurant or small business, something simple like a pizzeria, or used to, telling by his getup which seems a bit run down, unkempt in a way. Has reading glasses on his shirt as well as sunglasses on, giving the impression that even on a gray New York day, he still might be sensitive to the light, the reading glasses indicate he might have an issue with his sight, especially if he’s middle aged. 

4th Face

Older white male, probably in his 60′s. The gaze he gives the camera gives me the impression he might be an eccentric or esoteric character. For some reason his outfit and expression makes me think he could be in the fashion industry. Given his age he seems like he could be a designer, critic, or journalist. Reminds me of outfits I’ve seen on a blog called A Continuous Lean, sometimes eccentric and irregular, fashion forward, and sometimes more grounded in the classics as seen here, t-shirt, belt and pants, with a brimmed hat, all black.

7th Face

For some reason this seems to be one of the more multifaceted (in terms of options) people seen in this series. It could go either way, I could guess she might also work in the fashion industry, but her look says otherwise. She has a particular certainty to her face and seems sure of herself, especially with her hands behind her back. I would guess she’s probably in literature; a writer, publisher or editor, with tons of experience. Given her age and glance, her eyes say she’s not only done a lot, but she’s seen it all. Observant, a spectator to life?

Part 2

2nd Face

His bio confirmed what I saw in his features, definitely Italian, and as stated, very much a Roman nose. I was surprised to read that he was unemployed, he looked unkempt and messy in a way, but not in a way that says “I’m depressed” perhaps just in a manner that says “I don’t really care” or “I’m too busy” His getup starts to make sense when he mentions taking antidepressants as well as having issues with his self-image. I would have never expected him to be a boxer, not that he couldn’t be, he probably could, most likely in his younger years.

4th Face

I was amused to have guessed close to his age, not too far off, 60s, 59 in reality. The clothing again here speaks a lot to me, I wouldn’t have guessed him to be a model, but when he explains he’s a still-life model, it makes sense to me, he does have distinct features being from a mixed European background that would make him an interesting subject to replicate, whatever the medium. His gaze definitely told me there was something eccentric about him, and there was in my opinion, self-hypnosis is not something practiced commonly, at least not in the United States, and if it is done it’s usually under the supervision of a therapist. It’s interesting how he has mastered something like hypnosis in order to be better at his job.  

7th Face

Perhaps biased by her age, I could not see her being an avid or wild partier, or much of a socialite. She seems reserved and confident as I stated. I was interested to find she was indeed a writer, much more a political writer. Her idea that old age was freeing in a way rang true to me, it’s not that you stop caring, you just feel as if perhaps the majority of your duties are completed, you can stop competing with the rest of the world and get to know people as they are, without pretensions, since at that age, you’ve seen a lot. I find it admirable that she strives to be far from the idea of a typical elderly women as she said “discover a way of aging that involves anything that is different from doing crossword puzzles”, her commitment to keeping her mind sharp is admirable. 

#hcc #engl1301

[mentalality]

There ARE people out there who find YOU attractive!!

Yeah, I know, you’ve heard it before.  People who say this to you tend to be the ones who are already secure in who they are, what they look like, and they’re usually in a relationship too.  You want to shout “F*CK OFF!!” and smash them over the head with something heavy. 

How would they know what it’s like when you’re terminally single, and haven’t had even the whiff of any interest in years?!  And it can also come across as a metaphorical, rather patronising pat-on-the-head.  Urgh!!  Yeah, thanks mate, now I REALLY feel good about myself. 

But most of them mean well, most of them just want you to feel better about yourself because they can see your worth and your beauty.  So, put down that that baseball bat, hold off from committing assault, because I am just like you, but I have faith in the title of this article.

 THE PATH THAT'S LED ME HERE....

I know what chronic low-self esteem is like, I’m best friends with self-loathing, disgust and feeling repelled by the sight of yourself in the mirror.  I spent the best part of a decade wishing I was someone else, or wishing I just didn’t exist at all. 

It’s a lonely place to be.  And the longer you’re there, the more convinced you become that this is the truth; the world of attraction, sex, desire, relationships is for everyone else but not for you.  You may even come to accept it after a while, and pretend that none of it exists, or adopt the cynic’s position of “I don’t need anyone else in my life” or “There’s no such thing as love”.  Sometimes that’s just easier. 

But I promise you, there ARE people out there who see your worth, who see the beauty in your quirkiness, who love your unconventional nature, who think you are gorgeous.   Yes, I said it, GORGEOUS!!

I am quite a large woman, a UK size 18/20 (US 16/18), and I’ve always been made to feel fat (even when I wasn’t).  That was always the main source of my disgust with myself.  Looks-wise, even now, I put myself at unremarkable, plain, not someone who people ever really notice. 

Before my thirties, I’d look in the mirror and only ever see my flaws, which made me feel ugly (as terrible as that sounds).  The thing is, it’s a part of me that I’m highly self-critical, a perfectionist, and my vulnerable nature together with the negative bias in my thinking has meant that I’ve stored up any and every bad thing anyone has ever said about me. 

Those things were so well rehearsed, so well integrated into my sense of self that I came to believe them.  They went from opinion to truth right under my nose and buried themselves in my psyche to re-surface whenever they liked.  It’s only years of therapy that has saved me from whole-heartedly buying into this reality.

 SO, HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT CHANGING? 

You want to be someone who is alright with who they are, you’d like to be comfortable in your own skin.  I don’t know if the process is the same for everyone, and I can’t claim to be the finished article (is there any such thing??), but I know some things have improved.  The following is some of what I believe has made the difference:

Step One; be open to the possibility that you’re wrong about yourself.  Basically, don’t trust your mind.  The thoughts you have appear to you as fact, they just pop in there and you don’t question them.  Your mind lies to you though.  It goes on experience, it goes on whatever you’ve been feeding it. 

Think about a situation you’ve been in with another person where you find out that there’s been a misunderstanding; you’ve ended up saying “Oh sorry, I thought you meant.....”.  It’s easily done.  Your mind has probably given you the wrong interpretation of what the other person said.  Even if you’re someone who blames themself for everything (yes, I’ve been that person too), if you’re honest you can find at least one example of a genuine misunderstanding where your mind presented yourself with an alternative reality to the one that was intended, and you weren’t aware that it had happened until you were corrected.  

So, if you can accept the statement that your mind lies, you can start to entertain the possibility that your opinion of yourself does not necessarily reflect the truth.

Step Two; challenge your ideas about beauty.  You don’t need to accept the images of what’s considered attractive as gospel. 

A lot of the ideals we’re presented with are constructed the way they are in order to make money.  The best way to make money is to make people feel that it’s vital they get their hands on your product, and how do you do this?  You create a need for it, and you do this by making people feel they are lacking something. 

In the beauty industry, if you want to sell the maximum number of products and keep on selling them, you have to keep pushing home the message that you haven’t quite attained what you need.  You narrow the ideal of beauty to something that’s almost unattainable for most people, but reinforce the idea that it’s possible to get it if you spend enough money on it.  People want to believe it’s as easy as buying a product, and they can be everything they want to be. 

Advertising is so good at this that we don’t even know it’s happening most of the time.  It’s also all around us nowadays, so we often don’t have a choice about consuming it.  Just keep this is mind.

At a very basic level, the beauty in your body is in its incredible design.  You’re ALIVE, you’re conscious, you are a thinking, feeling, creating, inquisitive being.  It took an amazing set of coincidences for you to be here, and so many interconnected, complex systems make it possible for you to live and breathe. 

Your body is so miraculous that even the greatest minds haven’t been able to understand how everything in your body works.  Even the process of thinking is astounding; electrical signals whizzing around networks of neurons which your brain seamlessly translates into thoughts in fractions of a second.   Your consciousness, your personality, your experiences, your knowledge; they all live in this place, but no one quite knows how. 

But that’s just mechanics.  There is a beauty in WHO you are as well.  The interaction of your personality and your experiences make up a unique individual; no one like you has existed before and will exist again.  Sure, there’ll be similar people, but no one exactly like you.  That uniqueness means everyone has something to contribute to the world, and more importantly, the right to do so.  No one sees the world as you do, so no one can tell you that your viewpoint isn’t valuable.

So, let’s tackle the hardest part of it; physical attractiveness.  Different cultures and time periods have different ideas about what’s attractive, and that changes, which shows that it’s not an absolute.  Plus, there are always exceptions to the rule, I mean, there have to be, otherwise change would never happen. 

Decide to have your own definition of beauty.  For me, this was done by stopping reading women’s magazines, watching lots of documentaries about people who challenge traditional ideals, training myself to question all the messages I was being bombarded with every day. 

Thank whichever deity you believe in that there are alternative ideas out there, you just have to look.  I’ve seen documentaries about plus-size models and bloggers, about men's attitudes to their penises, about eating disorders, about people going through plastic surgery, about self-harm, about people of all sizes, races, genders, states of mind.  They all showed me a universal truth; people are beautiful.  Not just collectively, but individually too.

There’s another note that could help here too.  My therapist used to say something to me which I use when I’m feeling terrible about how I look.  There’s a TV show in the UK called Jeremy Kyle on which people air their personal problems and argue it out (think very low-grade Jerry Springer).  These people tend to be physically and personality-wise not the most appealing people, they tend not to be very intelligent, and the show tends to make them look as bad as possible. 

I don’t watch the show, and I don’t like to judge, but my therapist used to say to me that I should have faith that there’s someone out there for me because even the people on Jeremy Kyle have had sex & relationships.  Her implication was that if they can be found attractive by someone else, I definitely can.

At this stage, I think you need to have achieved a level of self-acceptance before you can go onto the next stage.  Other people pick up on your confidence, or lack of it.  It’s often in everything you do or say, in the way you carry yourself and the way you talk about yourself.  I think you have to have some respect for yourself and your body before you let someone else in, otherwise you could end up letting someone in who doesn’t deserve you and could treat you badly. 

Find a way to find at least something about you beautiful, even if you’re not 100% sold on it.  We all have good days & bad days, but you need a minimal secure base to operate from in order to protect yourself from further harm.  If nothing else, this base can be a sense of self-worth, and hopefully more can follow from this. 

People enjoy being around someone who is self-assured but not cocky, confident but not proud.  I think it gives them a sense of stability and allows them to feel similarly about themselves.

Step three; form connections with other people.  Yeah, I know.  For a lot of people reading this, this one is the biggest, scariest step of all, and I’ve just gone and bunged it in there casually like it’s a thing you just go out & do, like the weekly food shop.  That’s why I’m not just going to do a paragraph on it and leave it there.  I’m going to follow up this article with one entirely devoted to it, because that’s how important I think it is.

I must also tell you that without other people, I would never have got as far as I have on my journey to being a happier, better-balanced person.  I always thought people were the problem, and that I was better staying away from them; the irony is that they’re exactly what I needed. 

It was only through forming connections with other people that I learned how to see myself in a better light, to see what was reflected back at me from what I gave to others.  It was only through experiences of meeting other people that I learned where my own beauty lies.

 AN ENDING?

I can’t easily conclude this article, as I can never really prove the truth of the title.  The main aim, therefore, is just to plant the seed of the idea, of the possibility.  I want anyone who believes themself to be unattractive or who feels unworthy of love to just start to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong; that other people don’t see the same flaws you do when they look at you. 

Even the most outgoing, confident people suffer self-doubt, don’t always feel attractive, and feel inferior in comparison to others sometimes.  It seems to be an unfortunate part of human nature, but it doesn’t have to rule your life. 

It’s also the case that we are all imperfect, every single person on this planet, but not everyone beats themselves up over it.  So, I say to you; accept that you are human, and as such, accept that you have flaws and you have strengths, and it is all of these that make you beautiful.

#you are worthy #you are beautiful #you deserve love #beauty in everyone #self acceptance #real beauty #we all need connection #find your tribe #confidence is sexy #we are social animals #you are amazing #love is out there #everyone deserves love #love is the answer #be your best self #embrace life

[alexatwood86]

How to find or become a mentor in addiction

Finding Rewards in Mentorship – How Teens and Addicts Can Benefit Most

By Jessica Kantor

On a daily basis, the average life is filled with confusion, angst, adversity, and more. These are impossible to avoid, even for a commonly positive person. Companionship with another individual often offers a sense comfort and stability to many that go through life’s worst tribulations. There is something calming about finding someone to confide your problems in and have them listen, offer guidance, or help direct you on the “right” path, whatever that may be.

Many times, we do not feel comfortable sharing certain things with family members or friends. One may not necessarily be embarrassed about it, or maybe one is, but you need someone else. A therapist? Not everyone who wants a therapist, can afford a therapist, or sees the benefits of a therapist (a different article for a different time).

Finding someone, sans family, friends, or therapy, to help one through hard times seems like a difficult task, but can become easier when you discover the world of mentorship. In this article, we’ll take a look at this important role. We’ll give you tips on how to find someone that fits your personality.

What Does a Mentor Look Like?

“Mentor” develops in the mind as a stuffy example. Someone that tells you what is appropriate to pursue in life and career and what is not; what to wear to work and what to say during a job interview. This is not an entirely accurate description of the mentorships available today. In fact, some of the strongest modern mentorship programs around are for teens and those interested in a sober lifestyle.

The teenage years are some of the most difficult. Not only is the individual dealing with bodily and hormonal changes but they’re learning about how the world works, some quicker and more harshly than others. Liz Hardy of Mentor: The National Mentoring Partnership says that the benefits seen by teens that are part of the program are diverse and plentiful.

“Mentoring helps young people succeed by offering consistent guidance, support, and encouragement,” says Hardy. “Mentors can help young people set goals and achieve them. It is a gateway to skill development and self-confidence, which is key to helping young people make the most of their future.”

Teens that have a mentor are more likely to graduate high school, enroll in college, and volunteer in their communities. They are also less likely to begin using drugs and alcohol, according to the 2014 report, The Mentoring Effect.

“We believe that all young people can benefit from having a mentor, but those who may benefit most are those most at-risk for becoming disconnected from school, family, and work,” says Hardy.

Have a Mentor, Be a Mentor

Some of those teens that could have benefited from a mentor are individuals that now choose to lead a sober lifestyle. Nicole Vasquez, National Alumni Manager at American Addiction Centers (AAC), is a big proponent of both having and being a mentor, as she herself is both.

“I want to impress upon everyone the value of mentorship,” says Vasquez. “Whether you are in Recovery, or not, it is great to have somebody that you can bounce ideas off and go to when you need guidance. Sometimes you just need someone to listen. In your work space or home life, don’t wander around aimlessly. Others have experience that you can, and should, utilize.”

For those choosing sobriety, by way of addiction, having a stable support system is a life-saving choice. Chris Boutté, Alumni Coordinate at AAC, knows that he both needs a mentor and chooses to be one for others in need. Chris says,

“As an addict, my life is unmanageable and I don’t know how to live a proper life. I didn’t know how to live without drugs and alcohol because I didn’t know how to manage my feelings, good or bad. Having a mentor gave me the opportunity to learn a better way of living in all aspects of my life. Sayings that many hear in Recovery are ‘We keep what we have by giving it away’ and ‘We give back what was so freely given to us’ — Not only does [being a mentor] help me stay sober, but it’s given me a purpose in life. I feel like it’s the priceless debt I owe to the men and women who helped me in my early recovery.”

Boutté was amazed, when first in recovery, that he was getting such positive support and life lessons from someone without having to pay for it. He now understands the value of mentorship and wants to gift that to others.

Hardy speaks of the same gift for the adults that work with teens,

“We often hear that mentors feel they learn more from a mentoring relationship than their mentee does! Mentoring is a very accessible pathway to action for adults wanting to make a difference in a young person’s life.”

Mentoring as Rewarding Beyond Your Expectations

Vasquez shares the same positive message that being a mentor is just as rewarding as having one.

“I feel like [when you are a mentor] is when you need a mentor most of all. We will never have all of the answers to life, so you need others that you can reach out to in the event that you may need guidance for you or your mentee. Many times it is great to have a mentor who has a mentor who has a mentor. You get access to all of that wisdom up the line!”

Not only does Vasquez have a mentor in sobriety, but one in a leadership position as well.

“When choosing a mentor, find someone that you feel you can trust. What is so important about the mentor-mentee relationship is that you have someone that you can confide in. Essentially somebody that has what you want. For me, that was someone whose recovery I wanted to model, who was happy. That was very important to me. When I got clean, I looked for somebody who exhibited joy and happiness. You have to figure out what you yourself are looking for and find that in another person.”

This runs true for sobriety, relationships, careers, and more. Teenagers should find a mentor that represents, or are, something that they want to be. Those in Recovery should do the same. Boutté agrees,

“I wanted a mentor who had peace, serenity and sanity. I wanted a mentor that not only talked the talk, but they walked the walk too. I wanted a mentor who was someone I’d be proud of being myself, and that’s who I found and stuck with.”

Mentoring is a rewarding opportunity for all involved. Any caring individual, that has time and feels they have something to offer, should join a program for teens or those in sobriety.

“No matter what the situation is with each individual, I’m forever grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to potentially make a positive impact on their life and give them a little bit of hope that they can stay sober too,” says Boutté.

If you are interested in mentoring a teen, visit www.mentoring.org to learn more about their national programs.

If you or a loved one are struggling with addiction, visit www.americanaddictioncenters.com to learn more about treatment and sobriety.

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