#i just think that this toxic positivity trend of making one person's mental illness everyone else's problem | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chibicalzones · 3 years

Text

what the characters of haikyuu smell like pt. 3

featuring: 𝐧𝐞𝐤𝐨𝐦𝐚, 𝐟𝐮𝐤𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐢, and 𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐤𝐢

read part one and two!

DISCLAIMER: (just in case) this is my sister’s first impression on some of the boys so don’t take it too seriously!

warnings: touches on gender and sexuality at some parts.

post made by: alex 🍒 - ALSO I FIXED OUR ASK BOX AND SUBMISSIONS! i didn’t even realize they were disabled i apologize :c but yes, feel free interact with us!! maybe we shall open requests? or at least on my end hehe

— kuroo: nail polish

a strong aura

has a superiority complex but he knows bc he genuinely believes he’s better than everyone else

a cheater... in every way

wanted to be cool but then he created his own level of c00L B)

was popular - like the freshman that was friends with the seniors for nO reason

wears platform shoes

prefers vans over converse

drinks straight up expresso shots instead of coffee

uninterested in finding a relationship

(little does she know that this actually geeky science loving nerd is the loml so)

— kenma: wet fall leaves

tired of everyone’s bs

wanted peoples’ approval when he was younger but he’s grown out of that. already figured out it doesn’t matter

“i dont care if my roots grow in”

trans

hangs with the boys

shy

has a mysterious vibes

his old friend group kicked him out and is now a lone ranger

started playing volleyball to find friends and get his emotions out

has his own superiority complex because he wants to feel that he’s better than everyone else but he knows it’s unhealthy

acknowledges his own problems

likes edgar allan poe

— yaku: apple cocktail with vodka

mix of things: nice but also gets ticked off real easily

if he went to parties, he’d just be playing beer pong

has a girlfriend - one of the few things keeping him nice

doesn’t look he cares for people’s approval of him but he really does

B student

likes science but thinks astrology is stupid

jealous of vinnie hacker on tik tok

straight now but will become gay

— yamatoro: leather

grew up in a uhm... unfortunate place?

originally dyed his hair to look cool but went with the mohawk

people think he’s cool but just wants approval

single

dresses different than everyone else

but now since it’s becoming a trend, he’s really annoyed that he used to get bullied for it

had a michael jackson phase

likes edm

really bad at showing his emotions

pansexual

— lev: pool / chlorine

the kid that pushes you into the pool when you didn’t wanna be there in the first place

makes fun of you for watching anime but recently started watching it

grew up watching pokemon as a kid but he only liked team rocket

ALSO has a superiority complex

capricorn energy, moon in aries

actually dresses up scary for halloween

parents are sweet but he can be a bit of a meanie

had a toxic relationship with a woman... because he’s actually gay

— bokuto: gasoline

A CAR DUDE SKDJFSKDFJ

infatuated with cars

specifically owns a tesla in which his dad probably bought for him

spoiled as a kid

the popular kid

every popular person has at least dated him twice

everyone thinks he’s attractive

the class clown but may unintentionally make fun of people in the process

“iTs mEnTAL iLLnesS isN’T IT?”

has rich parents but at least he has morals!!!

but also might take your lunch money

taken, straight

changes girlfriends every two weeks

my sister basically thinks he’s your every day local fuckboi

— akaashi: burnt pasta

really trying his best

has good intentions but his execution’s either subpar or just awkward

likes science, specifically physics

really likes making paper airplanes and that’s how he flirts: he writes love notes and sends them your way

bad at showing emotions so he writes them

doodles and writes in class a lot

a transfer student

hasn’t had his first relationship yet

doesn’t like swimming but he likes pool floaties

knows how to play piano

straight... for now

— konoha: miso soup

a warn person

people who don’t know him are afraid to approach him but to people who are friends with him thinks he’s very comforting

hard on others because he’s hard on himself

has an arch nemesis that fights for his position

passive aggressive but means well

was bullied for the smallest reason... like he owned a spiderman lunch box in third grade

one guy stole his girl and his is SALTY

he’d be very startled if someone came up and hugged him

with that being said, his love language is acts of service

straight

— kita: ink

artistic

he does calligraphy

dabbles in spray paint

a bit conservative

enjoys watching skateboard falls, parkour gone wrong, etc.

cheated in elementary school

a- a bully

doesn’t let people get close to him

people don’t know what to think of him

rather good at things that people may not realize, but he really doesn’t care if they realize or not

prefers iced tea over lemonade

takes health very seriously and doesn’t drink soda

uses they/them and states he doesn’t need a relationship

but he’s had one in the past and that’s how he figured out

— osamu: cotton

a reliable person

doesn’t necessarily have a lot of friends but cherishes to make sure they feel appreciated

has a creative side

specifically sketches using pencil

likes movies and goes on movie dates

people like him for how forgiving he is

a hopeful person

has a realistic outlook on life

very practical

has several friends that are girls that think of him as an older brother

a lot of people like him but he he already has his eyes on set on someone

a closeted bi

— atsumu: butter beer

GEEK

a popular kid with a quirk

a marvel geek, his favorite superhero is the th3 classic iron man

likes girls who don’t wear a lot of makeup, also goes for bruh girls

genuinely a nice person

tries his best to be a approachable person but his geeky-ness gets in the way

has strange intentions?

puts a lot of thought into what he does but does it in a not-so-logic way

needs guidance

questioning life

is NOT like his brother

wants people to like him but he portrays himself weirdly

also questioning his sexuality

takes a gap year before college because he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet

— suna: battery acid

“there’s a potency to his presence”

takes all AP classes

does things for himself but he’s not that full of himself

wants to make it far in life

he doesn’t know what he wants to do but he knows he wants to make a difference in the world

always chooses to pick up trash for volunteer work

likes math because it’s straightforward

his dream significant other is someone just like him: he needs someone to care for him and soften him up

people say he’s intimidating but his friends say otherwise

into alternative rock

he would dress the way he wanted if he didn’t get bullied :(

pan and single

𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐮𝐬!

— sakusa: the inside of a missionary

overwhelmed by his own thoughts but whatever he thinks, stays there

not much of a talker

he tutors people in math and science

reads a lot of fanfic

has a famous tumblr account - swashbuckler26 and posts abstract and contemporary art

desperately wants to graduate

wanted to become a doctor until he actually started researching

now wants to be an artist

owns peacocks

he has one best friend because they share the same interests but that leads them to argue a lot

goes by they/them and doesn’t care for a relationship

asexual

this is the last part but i’m sure i missed some :/ if you guys have any other characters that you would like her to react to, lmk! hopefully i’ll be able to write for them soon!!! - alex 🍒

159 notes · View notes

celestial-violencia · 4 years

Text

Shadow WORK for a Reason

An essay on the absolute lack of self-awareness and staunch refusal to better oneself in the spiritual community by a frustrated and tired Kat who has had enough of your excuse bullshit

PART ONE: BASICS

What is shadow work? Shadow work is taking responsibility for and dealing with your shortcomings (Yes, everyone has shortcomings, welcome to being human). It is addressing the shadow self, things that we have repressed or things that have resulted in internalized negativity, and identifying and making changes to our behaviors and reactions by using cognizant behavioral techniques.

What isn’t shadow work? Shadow work is not spiritual bypassing, removing responsibility from yourself for your actions, pretending you don’t have anything to work on, making excuses, using toxic positivity to avoid facing your shadow self, etc.

Who is shadow work for? Literally everyone. There is no limit. Are you cognizant of yourself? Congratulations, you qualify for shadow work! Take a medal and start putting in work.

What does shadow work entail? Shadow work can be done in many different ways. Journal prompts, guided meditation, therapy, cognitive behavioral techniques and exercises, pretty much anything that enables you to look at and honestly assess traits in yourself, where you need to change, and ways to apply those changes. It entails actively working on yourself. It is an on-going process that does not end. You are never perfect. But you are better than you were and that is what matters.

PART TWO: SOCIAL CONFORMITIES AND SHADOW WORK

Over time, I have seen an absolute lack of work in shadow work. Excuses range from “ableism” to toxic positivity to refusal to admit a fear of change to overcome it. People are so averse to shadow work that the thought of taking a look at your actions and changing is considered “negative” and not allowed in people’s “safe spaces.” The current social trend seems to be coddling people from change because of toxic positivity or the groupthink of “If they change, I should be changing, and I don’t want to,” whether people will admit it or not. People get comfortable in their misery, want other people to be miserable, and/or even manipulate their lack of change to milk sympathy from others and refuse to look in themselves and see it for what it is. However, that’s still toxic, and whether they lack the self-awareness to see it doesn’t change what their behavior is. They want to change, but they just can’t. Well, I can’t with the excuses, period dot amen as my old religious studies teacher would say. The bottom line is, if you want change, you need to put in work. If toxic negativity is affecting you, it is not enough to go to a therapist, cry for an hour, and then go right back to the same behaviors that got you to that therapist in the first place. Does this mean that shadow work is instantaneous? NO. It is a lifelong process. But what matters is that you are constantly making progress. You can have bad days. You can have slip ups. We are human. But the overall trend of the graph should be upwards. I am not perfect. None of us are. Shadow work is not a safe space for you to hide from your responsibilities, negative traits, and negative behaviors and quite frankly? That safe space shouldn’t exist. Shadow work is 100% necessary. Now we’re going to break down excuses people like to cling to as if they’re lifelines while nope, they’re still drowning.

PART THREE: COMMON EXCUSES AND WHY THEY’RE BULLSHIT

“Ableism”/Victim-Blaming I can’t count how many times the word “ableism” has been thrown around as an excuse for not doing shadow work or working on yourself, along with “victim-blaming.” To start, you’re using the word ableism wrong. Shadow work does not require you to be physically able. Shadow work does not require you to be neurotypical. Shadow work does not require anything except the ability to know yourself. Mental illness, while it can add additional challenges, is not an excuse to avoid shadow work. If you are cognizant of yourself, once again, congratulations! Shadow work is for you. Shadow work is for people who have been victimized too, folks. You know what’s disempowering? Perpetual victimhood. You know what’s empowering? Giving people who have been victimized tools to establish healthy boundaries, recognize toxic behaviors, and provide ways to heal and break the cycle of perpetual victimhood. Looking at what part your own actions may have played in allowing people who are toxic to stay in your life is not blaming the victim. It is helping them realize where they should have drawn the line, how to draw that line, and how to maintain healthy boundaries for what they deem to be toxic in their lives. Does that mean it was their fault they were targeted by a toxic person? NO. But it allows them to find ways to keep the toxic people at bay. It is protection. It is giving them their autonomy back in being able to decide who and what they want in their lives and to heal from their trauma. To call that disempowering or blaming the victim is honestly stupid as fuck.

LALKs and Toxic Positivity What is a LALK? A Love and Light Karen/Ken/Other-K-name-here. What do LALKs love more than anything else? Toxic positivity. What is toxic positivity you ask? It’s like a team of soccer parents who will never tell you you’re wrong, coddle you, and say things like “It’s fine, sweetie, you’re doing great drowning! Keep it up! Love and light! Spiritually bypass like your life depends on it!” while their eyes twitch and they’re one negative thought away from a total mental breakdown but won’t admit it. Leave this shit at the door. Always being positive is not genuine, it does not help you, and just adds pressure on you that you wouldn’t otherwise have. It can cost you relationships and just lets the shadow grow until it consumes you like some whack horror movie and lets it destroy your life like a town in a superhero movie. Don’t do this.

BUT MUH TRAUMA “But Kat! I have trauma. Doesn’t that mean I can coddle myself and not put in any work?” Sure, you can take some time to recover but guess what? Shadow work is still necessary for you, too. Some people would argue that trauma makes it more necessary. You may have to take it slower than others because trauma shadow work can involve facing triggers head on, but does that make you exempt? Nope. What would you rather, to integrate and heal your trauma when you’re ready for it? Or keep repressing and denying it until you’re absolutely forced to deal with it and haven’t readied yourself?

NO WAIT I AM TOO SCARED TO CHANGE! DON’T MAKE ME DO THINGS! Fear is normal. Not wanting to face the uglier parts of ourselves is natural. Letting that fear hold you back is never going to benefit you. Ease your way into it. Fight the fear. Take it a step at a time. Once again, this is a process and not an instant fix. You can take this journey at your own pace. The important thing is you keep moving forward and keep putting in work. Never working on yourself out of fear is just going to force you to do so when you hit rock bottom. Choose your adventure: Go quietly and at your own pace or get dragged through the shadow work spike pit kicking and screaming. I think we both know what the better option is.

PART FOUR: CONCLUSION Avoiding shadow work is just going to harm you. Perpetually allowing yourself to engage in repetitive behaviors that are toxic to yourself and others because you don’t want to put in work should be illegal (I would say punishable offense, but you’re going to get punished by alienating yourself, etc. when you’re forced to face the consequences of your own actions and how your own toxicity affects others). Holding yourself back out of fear is not going to make you happy in the long run.

DO YOUR SHADOW WORK.

#shadow work #witchcraft #occult #tarot #self-help #witches of tumblr #witchesofinstagram #no excuses get to work

110 notes · View notes

musical-chick-13 · 3 years

Note

unpopular opinion: cersei isn't a villain that's going "mad," she's a woman that (just like her brothers!) grew up abused and has severe untreated mental illness and alcoholism (+she's more similar to tyrion than she thinks)

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

YES I HAVE MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT CERSEI (The usual warnings for discussions about ableism, domestic abuse, and mentions of inc*st, which is why I’m putting the rest under a cut).

People really do just. Love to call a woman "crazy" for having one (1) unpretty emotion and hating things that happened to her. Doubly so if she isn't A Combat Fighter™, and triply so if she actually suffers from mental illness.

Is she trending toward a mental breakdown at various points in the narrative? Yes. But that doesn't make her "mad." During her childhood, she was ignored by her father, who constantly underestimated her and saw her as a pawn and not a person; was always belittled and refused any sort of genuine help or positive reinforcement (including from said father) due to simply not being a guy; was told as a child that every single thing she ever wanted or worked for would be taken away by a younger and more beautiful woman (which, wow, that's a constant fear, and also speaks to the ageism and discarding of women who don't fit certain standards of attractiveness), that all of her children would die before her, and then that she would be violently killed by her sibling; and then as a teenager, married off to a man who refused to even give her the barest courtesy, belittled her every chance he got, and straight up domestically abused her. With the amount of shit she's seen and dealt with, no wonder she has a cynical worldview and views everything and everyone as an enemy.

The thing about Cersei is that she understands how cutthroat and unfair and utterly brutal the world she lives in is. And the only thing she can think of to do to survive it is to be the most powerful person. She views that as the only way to give her life meaning, the only way to keep herself safe, and the only thing she can do to fight the fate she thinks she's destined for; if she becomes untouchable because no one dares harm her, she can live her life in peace and keep her children alive. I fail to see how this makes her "crazy." Tragic? Relatable? Sympathetic? Self-destructive? Yes. But considering that all of those feelings--the need to be "perfect," (in her case, perfectly terrifying and perfectly in power), the extreme distrust that anything will ever work out, the certainty that specific things will no doubt happen even if there isn't concrete evidence, her assertion toward the beginning that she's only staying alive for a few people who need her, her difficulties with emotional regulation, and her tendency toward choices that don't actually help because she doesn't know how to cope--are all very common symptoms and experiences of people suffering from mental illness, labeling her as simply "mad" is a very inaccurate description, and one that reeks of ableism and misogyny.

Does she do terrible things? Yes. But everyone in this fictional universe does. And, honestly, I don't understand where this idea that the things she's done are So Much Worse™ than everyone else comes from. Blowing up the sept? Dany set a religious location on fire, too when she faced a future with the Dothraki. (And I've seen a lot of sympathy for her decision to burn down King's Landing, too. If we can extend understanding for her in regard to a comparable act, why not Cersei? Please make it make sense.) Dealing with internalized misogyny? The Greyjoys have an entire culture based on toxic masculinity/devaluing femininity. Murdering and manipulating people to keep her and her family safe and wanting to obliterate people who hurt her children? Those things apply to the Stark family, too. And Olenna. And Davos. Hell, even Tywin to some extent. The incest? Then why is Jaime a fan favorite and the biggest ship war between which female relative Jon should end up with? Everyone in this story has done sketchy if not outright horrible things to survive. Everyone has blown past and disregarded what we consider to be necessary moral precepts in the modern world. I do not understand.

And. Yes. Cersei and Tyrion? Very similar. They're both ostracized by society for things they can't control (Cersei for her gender, Tyrion for his dwarfism). They both cope by drinking and/or ill-advised sexual encounters. They both feel very deeply. They both care about Jaime (though obviously in...very different ways). They both have a vengeful streak and are masters at manipulation (rather than gaining their power through combat/swordsmanship/what have you). They both view politics as a game and get an at times disconcerting amount of fulfillment at "winning" and successfully deceiving/duping someone else. They both think they're Above It All™ and that everyone is stupid, predictable, and not worthy of their time, even though--despite their intelligence and terrifying influence--even though they're still victims of the same indiscriminately vicious system. This dynamic is one of the most fascinating in the entire series because they really could be such a great team, but there's too much fear and anger bad blood for that to be a reality and honestly IT'S SO SAD.

Anyway, TLDR: Cersei is my forever girl, and people need to stop with their ignorant, ableist takes.

#cersei lannister #meta #got #cersei meta #thank you friend you KNOW how much I love talking about my Girl™#my queen #my love #light of the west and my life #endless list of ruthless ladies i love #endless list of problematic faves #multi t(ASK) ing #behold! a creation!#tags edited to remove the book series name because it was not applicable here

6 notes · View notes

topconfessions · 3 years

Note

The American music market is indeed very strange. If women don't show their ass, sing/rap about it or enhance it, they won't come very far apparently. America in general has this severe toxic body positivity movement going on at the moment. Don't get me wrong, it should be said to everyone to accept themselves as they are, embracing their flaws and loving their favorite features but Americans are trying to push down everyones throat that you have to love every single part of your body, which is not possible or healthy. I think it's called body neutrality. If there's something you want to fix, you should get plastic surgery for that but most women who get the BBL just want some clout on IG and are chasing an unrealistic beauty standard, which will 100% change in the next 10 years or so and unpopular opinion, most women get plastic surgery to appeal to the male gaze in hopes of attracting a partner. But you can't expect husband material chasing after you while walking around with a cartoon ass. And if you critcize them, you're called fatphobic or whatnot lol.

But artists these days are so messy and post everything on social media. They can't form one cohesive sentence meanwhile artists in the 80's were able to perform 16 minutes songs and do interviews high on coke lmao. As long as the 16 years old fans see that you're flexing with your fake diamonds and leased Lambo, you made it lmao.

I think because fans want to have the delusion, that they know their fav well and are best friends or boyfriend/girlfriend with them, they expect the artist to put all of their info and secrets out there for the world to judge. And if they don't want to do that and don't show much skin, they're being called flops. People care more about authenticity and looks than talent.

It also has something to do with the bad music that artists put out. I truly think that if an artist would make a good song, people wouldn't foucs on anything else the artists could offer. I hope we can get some refreshing new stars because I don't see it for any of them, most of the music they release is now with Tik Tok trends in mind. We've seen that superstardom is possible for someone like Billie because she was so outside of the norm, although I dislike her whisper voice, and she's more like an Avril Lavigne, the anti-popstar while Olivia Rodrigo has the sound of Avril and is basically a mini-Taylor Swift.

There is enough space for a black superstar, who isn't a Beyonce clone but I wonder what happens if said superstar would be a mixed black person. I think Lsa and Twitter would start a riot lol.

this ^ my fave confession so far. I don't pay attention or listen to current much anymore. It's all lame and yes so many rockstars and artists were high off their ass, mentally ill or coked up / in abusive situations and still carried on intelligent / decent interviews. Scandal was frown upon now it's welcomed. You don't even need the merit or talent anymore like god fuck. hollywood is just a money grab now. I miss the world 1998-2010. It went to shit after that. Billie would't be shit if today was 2004 and that's a fact. She'd be somewhat cool but more indie level, she is captilizing off of the current generation and how the world is now. right persona t the right time but look at her recent blonde lingerie shoot where she looks dead in the eyes. she's a sellout herself and this rodrigo industry plant girl may replace her.

Beyonce is the john cena of music she made it hard and impossible for other black women to share the spotlight with her cause she's trying to michael jackson it out and not have competition at all. idgaf what her stans say as someone who watched her every destiny child video up until now as a grown ass woman, she is partially to blame for this. Just like how wwe is dependent on roman reigns cause Cena buried a lot of people behind him he felt was a threat. Oh LSA and twitter would get heated and they already drag Doja to filth. Rihanna is the last one who came close and there will never be another Rhi we need to accept it

5 notes · View notes

sevensav--d-archived · 3 years

Text

@knifelizard sent 🔥 🔥

Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.

**Okay so to preface this, these are MY bad takes and MY pet peeves, and I am just ONE person so please don’t take anything I say to heart bc what the fuck do I know, I’m nobody.

🔥 Formatting makes RP so much harder for me. Like, five years ago this shit wasn’t around, I stg. At least not in the rpcs was in. I have trouble reading small fonts, and FOLKS THEY ARE JUST GETTING SMALLER AND SMALLER like If I have to copy and paste your text into a dang word doc and up the size, I’m probably not going to want to keep writing with you! It’s too much work!!! Icons too, those are getting so dang tiny and like, more power to you if your eyes can understand, but with small sizes on top of psds that more often than not degrade the image, I can barely tell what I’m seeing.

The thing is, I understand that doing formatting is some of the fun for roleplayers, so I take it all with a grain of salt. Not everyone has the same beef with their eyes as me. BUT, there’s a big ol’ problem with a sense of elitism that comes with ~formatting~ in rpcs. I have noticed it pretty much first hand, since my formatting pretty much ends at cutting and trimming my posts. I shouldn’t have to force myself to take even MORE time on my posts in order to be noticed and taken seriously as a roleplayer. I literally HAVE changed the way I do certain things just to fit in with more of the RP trends, and I ended up stopping doing a lot of them because they took too much time and they just suck the fun out of it for me. Other folks, do it, go ahead, have fun. But it really grinds my gears when I’m made to feel like I’m not as good at the whole RP thing because I don’t do extra formatting. I should be judged on my writing and dangit, I think my writing is pretty good, apart from the spelling mistakes I make.

Even simple shit like, making new posts for asks- That’s a GREAT development, I love it but FUCK it makes me tired and sometimes I just don’t wanna do it but I KEEP doing it because literally everyone else does it.... AND THAT SUUUUUCKS like let me live please I already have a hard time writing please don’t pressure me into taking the time to make a complicated theme and making my posts more ~aesthetically pleasing~ when I’m just here to read! I just wanna read!!!!!!!! :(((((((((((

Anyway long story short, It only slightly bugs me when people format a ton, bc it’s inconvenient for me- but I can work with that bc I want other people to have fun. It’s when MY fun is in jeopardy bc I don’t wanna put in the extra work, THAT’S when I get a bit!!! Miffed!!! Phew. Okay, moving on.

🔥 MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS until your mental health makes you do something that I don’t like then you’re just toxic and a bad person, OR it doesn;t matter bc you’re not popular. Like. Bruh. BRUH. I’m gonna expose myself a bit here and state that there have been times on my blogs where I am like. Teetering on the edge of collapse, and I’m not only crying for help, I’m strapping a neon sign to my face saying “I NEED TO BE TALKED TO OR ELSE I WILL JUST NOT COME BACK” and literally???? Crickets.

Like my feelings have been hurt so many times, by so many people in this rpc that I’m just floating on a sea of amicability waiting for people to cut me off from them bc I’m so desperate for attention or I’m so clingy but god forbid, if someone with a really popular blog pulls the same shit as me, it’s positivity city. I could go on about how inbox positivity irks me, but I know that a lot of people really do enjoy getting it. I just wish I didn’t always have to see it when I’m barely hanging on and begging for a little love but feeling like no one sees me or cares. It’s like being really hungry and watching someone get fed by a bunch of other people.

I’M JEALOUS! I AM A PERSON WHO GETS JEALOUS it’s a whole dang part of how my mental illness processes itself in my pea brain noggin!!! Jealousy is an UGLY emotion and it makes you do SHITTY things. I am VERY aware of this fact and I’m making efforts to call attention to my needs in a healthier way but dang dang dang is it hard to do that a lot of the time when you see other people getting away with literally the exact same behavior. Like???????? Ugh. UGH! I’m tired.

“Just leave the RPC bones” WHY DO I HAVE TO GO? Why is it that the only way I can get anyone to even glance in my direction is to have my much more popular than me best friend call attention to my needs (love them very much btw) but seriously. SERIOUSLY. This RPC needs to reflect a bit on how they handle people with “the wrong” kind of mentally ill. Not every adhd or depressed roleplayer is the same. Stop. Treating them. Like. They are. And stop! Ignoring! The people who are hurting! Jeez! It’s more than just anxiety go brrr or depression go brrr for some people, this is like. All we fucking have. And losing it could be really bad for some people.

Anyway, I know this particular subject is really touchy and nuanced and whatever but I’ve been in enough RPCs to recognize when there’s a problem.

If you can’t take someone’s mental health, like if they are too much for you, TELL THEM there’s a pretty good chance they’re aware that they’re a lot to handle, and will either try to be better, or will accept your decision and move on. Don’t maintain ‘friendships’ if you’re not actually going to maintain them, you’re just going to hurt someone when they think they can rely on you, but they really can’t. You don’t owe that to anyone, but you shouldn’t dangle it in front of someone only to take it away when you don’t want to deal with the negative side effects of someone’s mental illnesses. And LETS BE REAL IF YOU RP YOU PROBABLY HAVE SOME SHIT so I think we ALL could learn to be more empathetic. Talk to people, if you can. If you can’t?????? I hope you’re doing okay.

UGH.

Okay. Alright, I got that out. Those were two big ones that have been eating at me for literally months.

If you don’t like what I’m saying, please do nooooot bother trying to make me feel shitty about how I feel. I already feel shitty for feeling this way! These opinions are unpopular, I do not expect anyone to be on my very specific, very mean page.

#**salty bones #**yartz all over the screen #long post

5 notes · View notes

gilmesc1 · 4 years

Text

Sacrificing my remaining braincells to the void

Ok friends, you requested it, you awaited it, I’ve cleaned out my ears to remove the melted remains of my brain, here we go, we’re doing this, tell my partner I love them. It’s time...for syscourse analysis.

So this is a very bare bones run through of syscourse, it’s as basic as it gets and if need be I’ll focus on components of it after I recover.

So, syscourse is literally the words system+discourse. Bet you guys never saw that coming. 20 seconds into this fucking mess and we already have a major plot twist. And I know what you guys are thinking. A bunch of traumatized people not getting along? Another plot twist!

Jesus I better tone down the sarcasm.

Anyways, what the fuck even has to happen to have syscourse, apparently two types of systems. Yes friends, two types of systems, and I’m not talking DID and OSDD (which are really quite similar).

Our players are traumagenic systems and endogenic systems. Traumagenic systems are systems that formed out of trauma, like DID and OSDD systems. Naturally this plunks me down in the traumagenic catagory, thanks to my big fucking mess of trauma. So we got that down, moving on to endogenic.

So an endogenic system is a system that supposedly split without trauma. No idea where the word endo comes from. Or like, what the fuck endo even means as a word like trauma. (Maybe I want to endo myself after reading a bunch of syscourse? Ok, ok that was bad.)

The biggest issue once you get down to it is who is the Real System tm, and do other systems belong in each other’s tags. This is the part where I’d smoothly bring you all to a good starting point, but *insert deity here* help me, there isn’t one.

Syscourse seems to be older than mankind itself mongrels, because I cannot find where it started and who the tags belonged to first. So for those of you who like to visualize, picture two dogs chasing each other’s tails, running in a circle, and that is syscourse.

So let’s break it down more. I, and I’m sure many others, flocked to tumblr to find others who experience what I do, that being traumagenic system stuff. Again, we have trauma that results in our system’s creation. And that’s all fine and good, sure not everyone gets along with each other but for the most part all us systems are vibing and sharing memes and posts.

Now like I said, to be an endogenic system you are a system without trauma, and to me this is a little confusing. Brains aren’t made to be multiple and I’m the clusterfuck I am because of trauma, but to just magically thanos snap a system into existence? That I have a harder time wrapping my mind around.

There are a lot of examples of endo systems, but the ones I’ll be looking at today are tulpas. What is a tulpa? Well at first I thought it was a ghost thingy that you get by thinking about it, (supernatural anyone?) but now that I look into it, it’s apparently a Tibetan religious practice.

So we have science vs spirituality. This spells disaster already for syscourse.

So to get a better idea of tulpas than I could give you, I’d recommend looking at tumblr posts on tulpas because I’m in sarcasm mode and not really in a position to educate about those. Long story short it’s a thought process where you can essentially create a second being that is similar to an alter, as it exists in a headspace and can switch in.

Now I said headspace and switch in on purpose, because that is where the issue lies. Endos and traumagenics fight about words like that, and who they belonged to first. Can an endo use the words system, fronting, ect when they are scientific words specifically for DID or OSDD, or can traumagenics use the word multiplicity when it supposedly came from tulpamancy?

Side note: Guys do not lecture me on words, I’m trying to give examples, sorry but I don’t have my words for traumagenics dictionary on me rn, that’s in my other hoodie.

The majority of day to day syscourse is endos and traumagenics “infiltrating” each other’s tags and safe spaces, and ruining everyone’s day. From what I have seen, many traumagenics do not want endos to interact with them, and personally I see a few good reasons for this.

1, mental illness is not a trend and DID and OSDD are very very rough to live with. With there currently being a lack of scientific evidence on the existence of tulpas, I understand how it can seem that some are cashing in on the “DID hype” and giving off this romanticized view of being a system.

2. People with DID might be looking for specific DID info, and having to strain through irrelevant topics to them might be heavily stressful.

3. We’re traumatized and random things can set us off. This is the internet and I think everyone is at least a little toxic, and both sides have said shit to each other, but when people get triggered its easy to lose control. Not an excuse, tis merely a fact.

I’ve seen endos post things like “all systems are valid” and it’s a nice sentiment, in my heart of hearts behind my black toxic drama loving one, I’d like it if systems could just get along, but on a topic as complex as mental illness I don’t think that’ll happen.

I’ve seen both sides say things that were really uncalled for, and there’s no right or wrong answer overall in a fight like this. Naturally I’m team traumagenic but as for whether or not I feel like endos are valid or not, jury’s still out on that.

Hear me out, I have heard the theory that endo systems can help deal with trauma despite not being formed by trauma, and I’ve met a few people irl and seen things that confused me. Maybe they were traumagenic systems who didn’t know their trauma, idk.

I really don’t want drama. I’m sure systems on both sides are good people but like I said, the internet is toxic. (btw I love you mutuals, you are all good people)

In my humble opinion syscourse is stupid. I think there definitely should be a discussion about endos and traumagenics, but like can we talk like adults and not be like “WE’RE ALL VALID UWUUUU” with a string of toxicity behind it.

That level of back and forth is dizzying and irritating, and quite honestly I don’t want to deal with it. This is me trying to be neutral and give an overview, but that’s hard as I am traumagenic myself, and I don’t really understand the other side.

That’s why I’m not going to say I reject endos. I need to figure out more for myself and since this does leak into my personal life i want to do it carefully. I’m open to polite discussions, but I really want to keep out of syscourse drama.

Another side note: Something I think that is especially stupid is the amount of outrage over users saying they dni with endos. It’s a choice for that person and it should be respected. Like how I have personal reasons for keeping discussion open, others have personal reason for closing it. That should be respected and not ranted about. There are thousands of tumblrs, find one that isn’t dni and leave those people alone.

Additionally, if any endos do want to talk I’d prefer if you dm me, as I want to keep my blog traumagenic focused, both for my followers and for me, out of respect for those who don’t want any endogenic content and for me so i don’t wear out my three brain cells (I’m accepting name ideas for them)

To end this, I don’t want drama, nothing makes it easier for me to cave to my vices then drama, and syscourse is so freaking tiring that it would be like rolling around like sandpaper to get involved.

So there it is, my useless, sarcastic post on syscourse. Let’s see how many followers I lose, and if need be I can look into more stuff about syscourse since this is an overview.

Again this was supposed to be neutral and not necessarily all of my views, I’ll get more personal on it later maybe, but tbh I’m too fucking tired for that rn. Chronic illness, hell yeah.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed, I’m impressed I wrote it all, have a good day guys, I have to go to a party while feeling like my body is leading a rebellion.

I don’t even like people, why am I going XD

But hey shout out to social distancing, I’m using my personal space bubble and NO ONE can stop me.

Ok, time to give the braincells a rest. See you guys

#DID #OSDD #actuallydid #actuallymultiple #actuallytraumagenic #syscourse #system #actuallydissociative #dissociative identity disorder #alters #didosdd #endogenic system #traumagenic system #tulpas

21 notes · View notes

dajokahhh · 3 years

Text

Alright, time for some pretentious sociological-esque rambling. This is gonna be long as hell (its 1822 words to be specific) and I don’t begrudge anyone for not having the patience to read my over-thought perspectives on a murder clown. CWs for: child abuse,

I think a lot of things have to go wrong in someone’s life for them to decide to become a clown themed supervillain. A lot of people in Gotham have issues but they don’t become the Joker. I think that as a writer it’s an interesting topic to explore, and this is especially true for roleplaying where a character might be in different scenarios or universes. This isn’t some peer reviewed or researched essay, it’s more my own personal beliefs and perspectives as they affect my writing. I think villains, generally, reflect societal understandings or fears about the world around us. This is obviously going to mean villains shift a lot over time and the perspective of the writer. In my case, I’m a queer, fat, mentally ill (cluster B personality disorder specifically) woman-thing who holds some pretty socialist ideas and political perspectives. My educational background is in history and legal studies. This definitely impacts how I write this character, how I see crime and violence, and how my particular villains reflect my understandings of the society I live in. I want to get this stuff out of the way now so that my particular take on what a potential origin story of a version of the Joker could be makes more sense.

Additionally, these backstory factors I want to discuss aren’t meant to excuse someone’s behaviour, especially not the fucking Joker’s of all people. It’s merely meant to explain how a person (because as far as we know that’s all he is) could get to that point in a way that doesn’t blame only one factor or chalk it up to “this is just an evil person.” I don’t find that particularly compelling as a writer or an audience member, so I write villains differently. I also don’t find it to be particularly true in real life either. If you like that style of writing or see the Joker or other fictional villains in this way, that’s fine. I’m not here to convince anyone they’re wrong, especially not when it comes to people’s perspectives on the nature of evil or anything that lofty. Nobody has to agree with me, or even like my headcanons; they’re just here to express the very specific position I’m writing from.

The first thing I wanna do is set up some terms. These aren’t academic or anything, but I want to use specific and consistent phrasing for this post. When it comes to the factors that screw up someone’s life significantly (and in some instances push people towards crime), I’ll split them into micro and macro factors. Micro factors are interpersonal and personal issues, so things like personality traits, personal beliefs, mental health, family history, where and how someone is raised, and individual relationships with the people around them. Macro factors are sociological and deal with systems of oppression, cultural or social trends/norms, political and legal restrictions and/or discrimination, etc. These two groups of factors interact, sometimes in a fashion that is causative and sometimes not, but they aren’t entirely separate and the line between what is a micro vs macro issue isn’t always fixed or clear.

We’ll start in and work out. For this character, the micro factors are what determine the specifics of his actions, demeanor, and aesthetic. I think the main reason he’s the Joker and not just some guy with a whole lot of issues is his world view combined with his personality. He has a very pessimistic worldview, one that is steeped in a very toxic form of individualism, cynicism, and misanthropy. His life experience tells him the world is a cold place where everyone is on their own. To him the world is not a moral place. He doesn’t think people in general have much value. He learned at a young age that his life had no value to others, and he has internalized that view and extrapolated it to the world at large; if his life didn’t matter and doesn’t matter, why would anyone else’s? This worldview, in the case of my specific Joker, comes from a childhood rife with abandonment, abuse, and marginalization. While I will say he is definitively queer (in terms fo gender expression and non conformity, and sexuality), I’m not terribly interested in giving specific diagnoses of any mental health issues. Those will be discussed more broadly and in terms of specific symptoms with relation to how they affect the Joker’s internal experience, and externalized behaviours.

His childhood was, to say the least, pretty fucked up. The details I do have for him are that he was surrendered at birth because his parents, for some reason, did not want to care for him or could not care for him; which it was, he isn’t sure. He grew up effectively orphaned, and ended up in the foster care system. He wasn’t very “adoptable”; he had behavioural issues, mostly violent behaviours towards authority figures and other children. He never exactly grew out of these either, and the older he got the harder it was to actually be adopted. His legal name was Baby Boy Doe for a number of years, but the name he would identify the most with is Jack. Eventually he took on the surname of one of his more stable foster families, becoming Jack Napier as far as the government was concerned. By the time he had that stability in his mid to late teens, however, most of the damage had already been done. In his younger years he was passed between foster families and government agencies, always a ward of the government, something that would follow him to his time in Arkham and Gotham’s city jails. Some of his foster families were decent, others were just okay, but some were physically and psychologically abusive. This abuse is part of what defines his worldview and causes him to see the world as inherently hostile and unjust. It also became one of the things that taught him that violence is how you solve problems, particularly when emotions run high.

This was definitely a problem at school too; moving around a lot meant going to a lot of different schools. Always being the new student made him a target, and being poor, exhibiting increasingly apparent signs of some sort of mental illness or disorder, and being typically suspected as queer (even moreso as he got into high school) typically did more harm than good for him. He never got to stay anywhere long enough to form deep relationships, and even in the places where he did have more time to do that he often ended up isolated from his peers. He was often bullied, sometimes just verbally but often physically which got worse as he got older and was more easily read as queer. This is part of why he’s so good at combat and used to taking hits; he’s been doing it since he was a kid, and got a hell of a lot of practice at school. He would tend to group up with other kids like him, other outcasts or social rejects, which in some ways meant being around some pretty negative influences in terms of peers. A lot of his acquaintances were fine, but some were more... rebellious and ended up introducing Jack to things like drinking, smoking cigarettes, using recreational drugs, and most important to his backstory, to petty crimes like theft and vandalism, sometimes even physical fights. This is another micro factor in that maybe if he had different friends, or a different school experience individually, he might have avoided getting involved in criminal activities annd may have been able to avoid taking up the mantle of The Joker.

Then there’s how his adult life has reinforced these experiences and beliefs. Being institutionalized, dealing with police and jails, and losing what little support he had as a minor and foster child just reinforced his worldview and told him that being The Joker was the right thing to do, that he was correct in his actions and perspectives. Becoming The Joker was his birthday present to himself at age 18, how he ushered himself into adulthood, and I plan to make a post about that on its own. But the fact that he decided to determine this part of his identity so young means that this has defined how he sees himself as an adult. It’s one of the last micro factors (when in life he adopted this identity) that have gotten him so entrenched in his typical behaviours and self image.

As for macro factors, a lot of them have to do specifically with the failing of Gotham’s institutions. Someone like Bruce Wayne, for example, was also orphaned and also deals with trauma; the difference for the Joker is that he had no safety net to catch him when he fell (or rather, was dropped). Someone like Wayne could fall into the cushioning of wealth and the care of someone like Alfred, whereas the Joker (metaphorically) hit the pavement hard and alone. Someone like the Joker should never have become the Joker in the first place because the systems in place in Gotham should have seen every red flag and done something to intervene; this just didn’t happen for him, and not out of coincidence but because Gotham seems like a pretty corrupt place with a lot of systemic issues. Critically underfunded social services (healthcare, welfare, children & family services) that result in a lack of resources for the people who need them and critically underfunded schools that can’t offer extra curricular activities or solid educations that allow kids to stay occupied and develop life skills are probably the most directly influential macro factors that shaped Jack into someone who could resent people and the society around him so much that he’d lose all regard for it to the point of exacting violence against others. There’s also the reality of living in a violent culture, and in violent neighbourhoods exacerbated by poverty, poor policing or overpolicing, and being raised as a boy and then a young man with certain gendered expectations about violence but especially ideas/narratives that minimalize or excuse male violence (especially when it comes to bullying or violent peer-to-peer behaviour under the guise of ‘boys will be boys’).

Beyond that, there’s the same basic prejudices and societal forces that affect so many people: classism, homphobia/queerphobia, (toxic) masculinity/masculine expectations, and ableism (specifically in regards to people who are mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent) stand out as the primary factors. I’m touching on these broadly because if I were to talk about them all, they would probably need their own posts just to illustrate how they affect this character. But they definitely exist in Gotham if it’s anything like the real world, and I think it’s fair to extrapolate that these kinds of these exist in Gotham and would impact someone like The Joker with the background I’ve given him.

I have no idea how to end this so if you got this far, thank you for reading!

#clown in command ; ooc #i've got a million of 'em ; headcanon

1 note · View note

spinedog · 5 years

Text

Why I write Adam the way I do

Okay, this started out as a reply to some awesome feedback on FR&H, and it... sort of got away from me. So, I decided to turn it into a textpost here, because I feel it’s really important and I haven’t really had a chance to put it into words until now.

Putting in a page break so to not clutter up your dashboards: fair warning, the below contains a lot of talk about abusive relationships, and a discussion about portraying abusers.

So, it was mentioned that a lot of fan fictions portray Adam as a one-sided monster. It’s a trend I keep noticing, even in stories that are otherwise really, really well written (though, keep in mind, I don’t read all that much anymore, so there could be some and I just haven’t seen it). Not many writers seem to want to give him any depth other than 'shitty dude'. And I understand why. His character shouldn't be sympathized with, and it's tough to walk a line between 'multi-sided' and 'redeeming someone who should not be redeemed'. Especially with all the Adam stans that started rioting after his death, I think most people either hate him so viscerally that they don't want to spend any time on him, or don't want to look like they're trying to excuse him. Both viewpoints are totally valid, by the way - I don't think anyone should write any character that they don't want to write. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t adore all the goat man memes that make fun of him.

But I think there's a bit of a danger there that no one really acknowledges. People with abusive tendencies aren't usually one-sided monsters in real life. Sure, genuine sadistic sociopaths types exist, who just hurt for the sake of hurting and really don't care about reasoning, but these people are rare in comparison. Your typical abusive relationship is generally not like this.

An abuser is the person who is mentally ill and starts to lean on you, then continues to lean, with more and more weight, because it's working, it feels good, and don't they deserve to have some support in their life for once? An abuser is the person who genuinely thinks you're the only person who will ever love them, who will ever tolerate them, and they tell you this and tell you that if you were to leave they would end up committing suicide. An abuser is the person who knows they get a rush of power from the feeling of hitting flesh and leaving a bruise, of knowing it's wrong but knowing they can never admit it, so they lie and backpedal to try and explain why it's okay that they have to hit you, because it was your fault anyways. An abuser is a parent who just wants their child to be perfect, can't you just listen to what they've told you, can't you just be a good child for once?

An abuser is a person who never emotionally matured, attaches to another person in an unhealthy way to stabilize themselves, and continues to do so even when they realize what they’re doing, using any kind of tactic or rationalization they can come up with to keep that person they so desperately need close. And I want people to see that. I want people to read a perspective that they understand, that they sympathize with, and know that it does not excuse what he's done. I want them to see it happening at the table across the room. I want them to see it in a stranger's eyes. And, most of all, I want them to see how easy it is to fall into that situation. Abusive relationships are far too common, but toxic relationships are even more common - and that’s often where it starts.

It’s almost happened to me. Twice, actually. Once with a very, very close friend who I truly believed could pull her way through her own mental illnesses, who I thought was making progress, who I thought cared very deeply about me - right up until I realized I was crying myself to sleep every night because no matter how hard I tried, and no matter how closely I followed what she wanted me to do, I had always done something wrong to hurt her (once, I asked her how her day was going, and she responded with five paragraphs about how I was incredibly hurtful for forcing her to remember the shitty day she’d had. I believed her.). Then with a romantic partner who I’d known for years, who I knew had toxic masculinity issues that I thought he knew about, who I thought I could trust - right up until he dragged me across the cab of his car into a kiss that I’d already said ‘no’ to. I left both of those people within days of that realization. I still define them both as more toxic than abusive, and I was certainly no angel in my own right - I did and said a lot of things in what I thought was my own defense that I’ve come to regret. But I’d seen abusive relationships before, through a story about a friend my mother had in school, movies, books - and most importantly, a small and very well-written script about a girl defending her boyfriend’s actions that I read in high school and never, ever forgot. I could read the signs well enough to know what road they were starting to turn onto. I knew that the thought of hurting them would stop me and force me to re-think my actions, but the thought of hurting me wouldn’t be enough to stop either of them. So I left - and was able to leave, due to one deciding that it was her idea to kick me out of her life in the first place, and the other deciding I was too high-strung and sensitive for him. The only reason I’m not still involved with either one is that neither attempted to guilt trip me into staying with them any further - and I’m deeply grateful to both of them for that.

That’s why I put so much effort into writing Adam, and why I’ve now written specifically from his POV twice. I knew I had a grasp on who he was, but it was just an understanding for me, and not a trauma like so many others have. I want people to read a perspective that they understand, that they sympathize with, but know that it does not excuse what he's done. And, most importantly, I wanted readers to come to this conclusion on their own, because I believe that the only way to make someone truly accept something is to make them think that it was their own idea in the first place. It's a daunting task, and I think that's why we don't see it as often as we maybe should. No one wants to stray too far to one side and be accused of sympathizing with an abuser, so they back off and stick to the safer side of the spectrum. Or, the people who truly understand it want nothing more than to just leave it behind them.

But, if you just portray every bad guy as a cartoon monster, you start to forget what real monsters look like. And so does your audience.

I expected to get set on fire by my readers when I posted the first chapter with Adam's perspective, honestly. I'd demonized the hell out of him in the first few chapters, and I didn't like it - I wanted him to be just as real as any of the other characters, and I wanted to show him for what I thought he really was, but I was afraid of the backlash that I thought I would get. But, after a few chapters I decided that I had no real reputation to sacrifice, and I knew that it was either going to sink the fanfic that I had no real stake in, or make it into one that people might actually learn something from.

So, I went for it. I put together motivations and psychology for him, I made him think he had a reason for what he did, and I made a reason for why he needed Blake. I pulled things from my own experience, even some thoughts from my own head during some of my worst moments, stressed over whether or not it was respectful to abuse victims, made tweaks, deleted most of those tweaks anyways, then pressed ‘post’ and hoped. And instead of the hell I was expecting, I got a lot of positive feedback and no accusation at all. People told me that, rather than coming across as redeeming him, I was making him even more frightening by making him more realistic. In fact, every single piece of feedback praised the fact that he actually had motivation and was a character in his own right, but was still despicable. I think I did lose a couple readers - there were a couple that had been leaving a lot of feedback and suddenly disappeared around the same time as that chapter was posted, and I still wonder if it was because of that. But I got a rush of confidence, because I’d actually accomplished what I’d set out to do. I was walking that line, and more importantly, people could actually see what I was doing.

Now, here we are. I don't think I'm doing anything unique, or special. Honestly, I don’t even really think I’m all that good of an author, overall. I'm just doing what I wish more writers would - depict a mentality that they don’t have. Maybe they're scared to, maybe they don't understand, or maybe they just don't have an interest in how these people think. And every single one of those viewpoints are valid. If someone isn’t comfortable with a character, or concept, or relationship, they should not write it. That’s why I’m doing it - I figured that if I understood it, I was interested in it, and I felt brave enough to try, then there was no reason not to give it a shot. Actually, I sort of felt like I had a responsibility to - like I said before, I have experience. But I’m not traumatized, nor are those memories terribly painful for me anymore.

So, I use them. Because I know there are people who can’t share their experiences because it’ll bring up too much pain and suffering. Because I know there are people who think they know a monster when they see one, but think that the person that won’t stop texting them, that convinces them to do things they’re not comfortable with, that makes them feel small, ‘isn’t like that’. Because I know there are people who see the Adam in RWBY canon and genuinely do not understand why everyone hates him so much, or why he was portrayed the way he was.

I write Adam as a dynamic character because I want everyone who reads this FR&H to understand the fact that abusers are real people, not plot devices, or horror stories. People that maybe could have been helped, could have turned their lives around, if someone had seen what they were becoming sooner.

But once habits are set, once they’ve sunk into what they want the world to be, once they’ve built a fragile world around themselves, you cannot help them anymore. All you can do is not be a part of that world.

Thanks for reading, guys. <3

#spinedog speaks #long post #rwby #rwby fanfiction

19 notes · View notes

settlingtheocean · 4 years

Text

Resolutions as a skill to cultivate; Making helpful and sustainable commitments

At this time of year - the end of the year - we like to make resolutions for the next one. It’s something of a trend, and often many of us have difficulties keeping these new years resolutions. Sometimes we get really hard on ourselves, by making ones which are unrealistic or riddled with rather toxic attitudes that we project onto ourselves in a way which leads to suffering. These toxic attitudes often are what makes our lofty aspirations unsustainable or even harmful.

So I decided to share this reflection from last year, given by Ajahn Kaccana, a Buddhist monk in the Thai Forest Tradition. Here, Ajahn Kaccana reflects on adopting resolutions and commitments skillfully, and how one can commit to them in different ways - not just a once a year thing, but sometimes a weekly or monthly thing, or even a lifelong thing. There may even come a time where resolution becomes a natural part of our life, or when that resolution needs to be changed or adjusted to be more realistic or beneficial. Ajahn Kaccana thus places special importance on giving attention to both cause and effect, rather than picking up ideals and holding onto them without any consideration of how they fit in with the rest of our lives.

First, some excerpts:

“.. in order to make skillful resolutions, one has to understand the patterns of cause and effect in one’s own living situation, and what you want to do is find the places where a relatively small change in your actions - one that you can commit to and keep - will have a large change in outcome. Given that our lives and minds are quite complicated non-linear systems, it’s possible to do this - but it takes attention and skill. What one doesn’t want to do is try to commit to results without having any concept as to how the results can be brought about.”

“Another trap that can happen when making commitments is that - [well first,] who knows if it’s going to come out the way you expect it to? It’s more helpful to keep a commitment for three days, and then realize, ‘I managed to do that for three days, but it wasn’t a good idea after all, but I still made it for three days.’ That can be more skillful than trying to do that same thing for three months, and then after three days realize that ‘this isn’t working at all, I better quit.’ That’s okay too, sometimes you make that mistake.” ”…Over-shooting commitments not only means one might not keep commitments, it might mean that one will actually behave less skillfully than if they were not holding commitments in the first place.”

“One other commitment that I found useful as a lay person was to keep the Uposatha lunar days. I was pretty strict - I wasn’t going to eat dinner or in the afternoon. My research group usually ate lunch together, so I would have to make sure that they would eat early enough or I would eat earlier than they did. Occasionally we’d have dinners, and I remember one time I had to say, ‘John, I can’t come to that dinner because I’m not eating that day.’ But he just said, ‘Come any way and have tea.’ So that’s what happened. That’s one of the things where a commitment really has teeth and really helps - if you make a commitment and keep it, even if it’s not pleasant. ‘Do the practice, watch the mind,’ was the way I put this to myself a while back. ‘There are these conditions: I’m at a research group dinner and I’m just drinking tea. It’s not going to pleasant, and it doesn’t have to be. I can learn something from this.’”

It’s the day before new years eve… and one subject that comes naturally to mind is the topic of aditthana, resolution. New years resolutions have a somewhat checkered and laughable history, but at the same time, when we reflect on what really shapes our lives, it’s the aditthanas we make - your marriage, your ordination, if you choose to go to college - these are all serious commitments, multi-years, and they shape our lives. We can’t avoid making them, so it’s important to reflect on these topics.

I thought to start more with the Buddha’s perspective on the importance of action. I’ve read much of the discussion in Ajahn Geoff’s book Skill in Questions, and I found it quite illuminating. Ajahn Geoff looks at the Pali Canon and explains that there are two teachings that the Buddha called categorical - true across the board. One of these is teachings on unskillful versus skillful action - there is a distinction, and if you do unskillful actions there will be negative results, skillful actions will have positive results. The second categorical teaching is the four noble truths - this is the more complicated of the two, but can lead to full awakening.

The realm of addithana, resolution, is pretty much regarding the first category: skillful and unskillful actions. Again, Ajahn Geoff notes that the Buddha placed great importance on the fact that actions have results - our choices matter. The Buddha didn’t usually seek out debates, but there were a few teachers that he tracked down and who asserted that actions had no consequences, and really you didn’t have to pay attention to the way you lived your life. What would happen to you was determined by fate or random chance, so what you did didn’t really count. You didn’t have to think much about your actions, just live. These teachers lived according to the conventions of being a [renunciant], but if they thought actions didn’t have any results, why did they bother to live that way? There must be more pleasant ways to live.

There’s a number of different lists of skillful and unskillful action. One of the most basic is just the precepts. Everyone here recited the eight precepts tonight, which lay people take on for a day and a night on lunar observance days, and residents of the monastery live under all the time. The regular five lay precepts are a subset of those: not to take the life of any living creature, not to take what is not given, not to engage in sexual misconduct, not to engage in false or harmful speech (the strict precept being on false speech), not to take intoxicating drink or drugs which prevent heedfulness.

There’s a sutta where the Buddha speaks about these precepts - taking on these precepts is a gift to the world. When you undertake the precept not to take the life of any living being, then that is giving safety - freedom from fear - to innumerable beings. That in turn has a result, and that is that one realizes some measure of that safety oneself. Similarly with the other four precepts: when we refrain from doing those things, we become trustworthy. We don’t cause harm to others, and our lives start to become ordered and praiseworthy.

There’s a more refined list, more extensive, which is the ten courses of skillful and unskillful kamma. The ten are: to refrain from taking the life of any living creature, to refrain from taking what is not given, to refrain from sexual misconduct. These are the three bodily types of wholesome action. The four verbal ones are to refrain from lying, to refrain from divisive speech, to refrain from harsh speech, to refrain from idle chatter. The three mental aspects are non-covetousness, non-ill-will, and right view.

… Again, the Buddha’s emphasis was that in call cases, he asserted that unskillful action leads to long-term suffering and harm while skillful action leads to long-term benefit and happiness. The short-term results are not as clear as the long term ones. To my understanding, that’s nearly a definition of skillful and unskillful; what results they lead to in the long term, for ourselves and for others, [determines whether they are skillful or unskillful].

Now, during a retreat like this, we have an opportunity to cultivate more subtle qualities of the mind. But still, they can be split into wholesome and unwholesome. For example, a list of the more subtle qualities are the qualities that the Buddha taught to his foster mother after she ordained as a Bhikkhuni. He actually gave her this teaching on how to recognize what is or isn’t Dhamma. As usual, the negative version comes first, and I’ll go to the second, positive version: “Gotami, the qualities of which you may know, ‘these qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to seclusion, not to entanglement; to aroused energy, not to laziness; to being easy to support, not being difficult to support,’ these qualities you may know: ‘this is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the teacher’s instruction.’” Those qualities are much more subtle aspects of the mind than what one is working with on the level of precepts, but still the difference between skillful and unskillful [is there].

So, when we’re contemplating resolutions, and what are skillful commitments and what are unskillful commitments, it’s useful to keep these perspectives of cause and effect in mind. One thing that I notice about unskillful resolutions is that often times, people imagine what they want to be, then they commit to being that in the future. But that doesn’t really take into account cause and effect. There are some things you can will yourself to be, but it actually depends on one’s skill. For instance, the precepts are something you can commit to, but it’s much more challenging for most people to say, ‘today I’m not going to have a thought of ill-will.’ That’s not how my mind works.

So in order to make skillful resolutions, one has to understand the patterns of cause and effect in one’s own living situation, and what you want to do is find the places where a relatively small change in your actions - one that you can commit to and keep - will have a large change in outcome. Given that our lives and minds are quite complicated non-linear systems, it’s possible to do this - but it takes attention and skill. What one doesn’t want to do is try to commit to results without having any concept as to how the results can be brought about.

Just to give an example: for many, many years I’ve had a habit of scratching pimples. I’ve tried various times to stop that, but to not much success. On the other hand, I notice that when I’m on retreat, or other situations where my mindfulness is heightened - oh, I’m not doing that anymore! That’s an example of an effect rather than a cause. I’d be better off thinking: “how can I be more mindful? How can I put in the causes to have greater mindfulness, and then not-scratching pimples might happen more naturally?”

On the other hand, there are other causes that have much more effect. For instance, I have the capacity to get very absorbed in books. If I pick up a book, I can read it - especially when there’s not so much to do. Sometimes I can pick up the book, and two and a half hours later I put that book down. That’s a big chunk of time, and that’s a decision one wants to make ahead of time. Or other things: when I was a lay-person, there were years where I was quite addicted to particular video games. I could see in the course of paying attention to my mood and how things went, If I was playing video games for hours it scuddled a lot of my life. I was much less happy those times. The cause was always that - there were causes in terms of why I would play video games, but if I could keep myself from doing that I’d usually find something better to do, and certainly that had a less negative impact on my mental states. Those are examples of causes.

One has to investigate: how does one apply effort skillfully to this situation? I could see, for the video games, it was taking my mind in directions I didn’t want to go. There was a year where I resolved not to play video games alone that year. I put that caveat there because there was one friend who I rarely saw but would definitely want to play video games with me - that was okay. I was able to keep that for about two or four months. It was helpful, but that was a biggie and I did end up breaking that. Reflecting on it later, what I realized is that for something like that, you want to put in some more consequences. What would have been more helpful I think is if I had found a friend, and I’d call said friend every two weeks or so just to chat, and then say ‘yeah, I didn’t play any video games for two weeks.’ Then, after a while building that momentum - did I really want to admit I slipped on that? Another thing is, if the friend was supportive, just to call and say “I’m in a bad mood, awfully close to playing video games, but I thought I’d call you instead.” That’s skillful, and that’s often what we need to do if we want to abandon something like that.

There’s a book I read… quitting smoking is really tough. First, you have to see the drawbacks of what you’re doing and actually get a good chunk of your mind behind the benefits of not-playing video games or not smoking or not picking up random books to read. But this person [who was quitting smoking] said, “I really want to do this. I want to see my grandkids through another seven years, or however much longer I live without smoking.” My grandmother was a smoker, and she must of smoked at least four decades, and I remember we kids would always hide her cigarettes and do other things to her, because we didn’t think smoking was a good idea. I think she did appreciate our efforts, but she didn’t stop smoking. But I remember one year, she wasn’t smoking - what happened? We asked our parents later, and the story had always been that Grandma was okay with dying early because she didn’t want to be a burden to others, but she had bad circulation in her legs and it was getting worse. Her doctor told her, “if you don’t stop smoking, we’re going to have to amputate your legs in a couple of years." She didn’t want to be a burden on other people, so imagining her self without legs was completely unacceptable, so she figured out what she needed to do to quit smoking. That’s an example of how understanding the consequences can lead to a lot of motivation.

The author of this book, The Pathfinder, was also hooked on cigarettes but he also set up consequences for himself. He wrote out a $1000 dollar check to the re-election campaign to a senator he didn’t like at all. He sent the check to a friend he trusted, so he couldn’t fake out. He said, "call me up every week, and ask me if I’ve smoked. If I start smoking, you send that check off to the senator.” That worked. He was willing to go that far. This is an example of the kind of skill it can take. Smoking is harmful, and it can be worth that [effort to quit].

Most of the time we’re dealing with much more subtle things, so you don’t need to use big consequences like that, in fact it would be inappropriate. But it is helpful to have a bag of tricks. One thing is that here at the monastery, living after a while we can realize we can do without breakfast just fine, though breakfast is nice. Often times, if I want to change something, I’ll use breakfast as a way, “If I break this one day, that’s okay but I just won’t eat breakfast the next day.” That gets the mindfulness going.

With the example of reading - and it’s not that it’s a problem with reading - I realized you want to make a choice: "does this seem to be worth looking at?" Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. To force myself to make that choice, I just say, "okay I’ll read, but I’m not going to open that book until I walk out of the room with it." So I actually have to move somewhere in order to read it. If I forget - and it’s an easy thing to forget - then I’ll just skip breakfast the next day. That particular time, it ended up working, and now I’m still better at not reading random books, even though I set down those consequences.

Another example, a fun one to play with in terms of watching desire, is that I notice I have lots of desire when getting food in the food line. One thing I worked with was, "okay, look at the food on the table. What’s the most desirable thing out there? Be honest, and don’t take it.” So whatever the most desirable thing out there is the one thing I won’t take. Here [at the monastery], there is absolutely no danger of starving, so you can watch [the mind on] that one.

There’s also the ascetic practices, the dhutangas which we can take on from time to time and are useful for enlivening practice and shaking off the defilements. It’s important to take these on for the proper reasons - it’s actually a monastic offense to take one on if your motivation is to impress other people or get special favors. There’s actually quite a few people practicing them in the community here, and you can ask them what the benefits are. I’ve done a few from time to time. Eating only what one gets on almsround (e.g. not eating breakfast) is one I’ve taken on from time to time. I can remember, when I first tried, that would sort of start obsessing my mind the day before: "I better be eating a lot today, because I don’t know what I’m going to be eating tomorrow.” I just got to watch that, and then as the weeks went on it became more normal and less obsessive. Even if I didn’t know if I’d get any food, I wouldn’t be thinking about, ‘oh, am I going to be getting food or not?’ My mind just thought about the other things it usually thinks about, which aren’t always skillful, but it was interesting to watch how that one particular practice lessened one particular craving or obsession. That’s what the dhutangas are designed for, and what they’ve been doing for a long time.

Another trap that can happen when making commitments is that - [well first,] who knows if it’s going to come out the way you expect it to? It’s more helpful to keep a commitment for three days, and then realize, ‘I managed to do that for three days, but it wasn’t a good idea after all, but I still made it for three days.’ That can be more skillful than trying to do that same thing for three months, and then after three days realize that ‘this isn’t working at all, I better quit.’ That’s okay too, sometimes you make that mistake.

But one thing is that if you had made a commitment for two weeks and you find it helpful and it produces good mind-states, then some months later one can think, "those were good mind-states, I’ll make that commitment and get the same mind-states." No - sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t; you have to watch the other conditions. For instance, during my solo retreat, I made a decision to do ten minutes of walking meditation outside after waking up and before going to bed. This was quite helpful, as it was actually getting things up and moving instead of just getting up and sitting. A week ago, coming towards this retreat, I decided "I’d like to be more diligent, why don’t I try the same thing?” So I made the same commitment, but I didn’t pay attention to the differences. It’s a lot colder outside right now, and it’s not that the cold itself is the problem, it’s that I don’t like cold, especially right when I’m waking up. The other thing was that those were two weeks of solo-retreat where not much was going on and my mind-state was much more in my control. Here, we still have work periods, meetings, people calling, issues coming up. I don’t always deal with those issues as skillfully as I’d like to, and external things can really tip one’s mind-state around. For those two reasons, some days I went out and walked, but at least two days I missed. One of the things you notice about the mind is that it’s actually pretty frustrating - [even] if you’d made a commitment, "the next thing I’m going to do is get up and do my stretches and get up and walk,” the mind can say, "well, I’m just going to sleep," - that’s what I did. Whereas if the commitment is to something that seems not as bad, "just get up, do stretches, do sitting meditation and chanting," I’m more likely to actually get up and just sit. This is how I find my mind is. It’s frustrating and one can think "it shouldn’t be this way," but that’s not helpful. It’s more helpful to think, "this is the mind I’ve got - maybe one day I can train it to be some other way, but right now it’s like this.”

So over-shooting commitments not only means one might not keep commitments, it might mean that one will actually behave less skillfully than if they were not holding commitments in the first place.

Just reflecting on this, these are some examples and reflections about how making and keeping commitments is a real skill. I’ve learned a great deal from it over the decades, and I still have a lot more to learn, but like learning any skill one can engage the mind with it.

One other commitment that I found useful as a lay person was to keep the Uposatha lunar days. I was pretty strict - I wasn’t going to eat dinner or in the afternoon. My research group usually ate lunch together, so I would have to make sure that they would eat early enough or I would eat earlier than they did. Occasionally we’d have dinners, and I remember one time I had to say, "John, I can’t come to that dinner because I’m not eating that day." But he just said, "Come any way and have tea." So that’s what happened. That’s one of the things where a commitment really has teeth and really helps - if you make a commitment and keep it, even if it’s not pleasant. "Do the practice, watch the mind," was the way I put this to myself a while back. "There are these conditions: I’m at a research group dinner and I’m just drinking tea. It’s not going to pleasant, and it doesn’t have to be. I can learn something from this."

Tonight we have the opportunity to stay up late, if we want - it’s one opportunity for commitment. On the other hand, we’ll also be staying up late tomorrow night. We’re settling into the retreat, so it may or may not be a good night to commit to staying up late, but this is exactly part of the skills that we’re developing. So I’ll offer this for your reflection.

#new years #resolutions #new years resolution #commitment #buddhism #practice #meditative #effort #persistence #dedication

1 note · View note

sparklessswift · 4 years

Text

19 Things I've Learned in 2019

1. “The desire for positive experience is itself a negative experience. And paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience.” — Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck)

I always thought that "How To Be Happy" things on the internet are true and those things can really change your life if you will try to do so. But while reading this book, I've realized that it's not. That the irony behind thinking of ways to be happy and positive just reminds us of what we are not and of what things we failed to have that we've always wanted. The more we try searching for ways on how to be happy, the more we can't attain happiness.

2. The quality of your life depends on the quality of your choices and decisions.

I've learned that you are the only one who's accountable for everything that you choose to do, for every thoughts that you entertain and for every decisions that you make. The quality of your life is shaped on whatever you want it to be. Whenever you feel like you're carrying a huge amount of emotional baggage, it's because you chose to carry it anyway. You chose to entertain the melancholia, you chose to let it enter your life. Do not blame your situation or even other people. Change the way you see things, make good decisions and choices and the quality of your life will be better.

3. Music is a form of enlightenment towards our true emotions.

I found out that longing to hear sad songs that we can relate to whenever we are feeling sad isn't a sign of tolerating sadness, it means we are trying to fill the gap between what we know and what we feel. Finding the perfect song that explains exactly the way we feel helps us figure out the right words to describe our current emotion. It makes us feel that we are not the only one in the world who's suffering. It's relieving to be so connected to a song that you feel as though, it was written for you.

4. Forgiveness is a nice thing to do.

There are times when we feel as though, people and even ourselves are not worthy to be forgiven and that no amount of apology will cease the burning fire. But one thing I do learned this year is that, forgiveness means letting go. Do yourself a favor and let go of the bad memories, what's important is that you took it as a learned lesson. Let go of the grudges that you kept for so long, it will give you a peace of mind. Let go of the idea that forgiving without hearing an apology is not necessary in life, it is. Forgive yourself for all the mistakes you've done in life and forgive those people who have hurt you as well. Release the pain by forgiving so you can finally move on.

5. Self loathe is the most toxic form of hate.

I've learned that there is nothing more toxicating in life than hating your own existence and body. It's like badly wanting a poisonous thing even when you know it is bad for you. It's like loving the lyrics to Taylor Swift's song "ME!" because it radiates self-love but there's always a cringeworthy feeling whenever you sing the words "I'm the only one of me, baby that's the fun of me" because you can't feel the message it conveys. And it feels like, no amount of motivation from other people can cure the poison in you. I know it's easier said than done but remember that only you can free yourself from self loathing so might as well start appreciating small things about yourself and sooner or later you will realize that it's fun to be the only one of you.

6. Being 18 is challenging. While it may be true that each year has its own challenge, being 18 is quite different. It's the time when your mind starts forming questions about life, existence, and future. It's like a climax to your own story, exciting as it may seem but it contains setbacks, challenges and a hundred thousand pieces of inspirations needed in order to thrive harder. In order to believe that you can pursue your dream of reaching the happily ever after.

7. Appreciate high school moments while they last. Realizing how fast the time has flown after my journey in high school is something I wish I was ready for. Funny how we're so attached to a moment from the past (e.g. graduation) that everytime we remember it, there's this bubble of thoughts appearing in our heads with the line “it felt like yesterday” and it feels so bittersweet. If there's one thing I can teach the other generations, it is to always appreciate each moment while it lasts. After all, moments will become memories that will forever be stuck in our head so might as well enjoy your high school life and make good memories out of it.

8. We are all temporary in everyone else's lives and that's normal. It feels relieving when you realize that each person that we meet has a temporary role in our lives. We are bound to lose connection with someone whom we thought will never leave us, we're bound to cut ties with people who are not good for us, and we're bound to be left behind or leave not because we want to but because we just crossed paths with each other, we aren't really travelling the same path not as what we thought we are. Learn how to appreciate someone's presence and learn how to accept someone's absence.

9. Do not drown yourself in the thought that internet validation is important. It is definitely okay to dump the idea that you're living in the wrong generation if you think likes/reactions, comments and shares are not important. Most people today still haven't come to realize that the internet has not just open-sourced information, it has also open-sourced insecurity, self-doubt, and shame. And we have to open our minds about it. Life is happier the moment you realize that you should not give a damn about what other people think of your posts.

10. Do not jump on hate trends in social media just because it's in. Cancel culture has made a noise in the internet this year and suddenly everyone are bragging their freedom of speech because they are jumping on the bandwagon (or should I say, we're? 😂) But one thing I do learned from all the hate trends is to be discerning. This is the best time you can practice cherry-picking and only utter a word when you think you really need to or when you think it is appropriate to do so. Just as Taylor Swift said, “You just need to take several seats and then try to restore the peace and control your urges to scream about all the people you hate”.

11. Being attached to someone does not mean you're into that person. Attachment is way too different than love and even infatuation. It needs not to be stereotyped. Sometimes all you have to do is to give yourself the benefit of the doubt about how you feel and you will realize the true value of a person to you.

12. The hardest struggle in life that we can ever experience is something that is related with our family. Indeed home is where the heart is. Family is our major source of inspiration and it can also be our major source of distraction whenever there are unforeseen circumstances going on. And I think dealing with those circumstances is the hardest struggle to face because there will always be a pain in your chest wherever you go that is inevitable. The pain that lies deep within you but bleeds through the surface of your body that you can't hide.

13. College is way too different than high school and you should be ready for it. Of course, culture shock will always be there the moment you enter college. You will start comparing high school and college in every single details, you will randomly reminisce high school memories while walking in the hallway and you will remember how easy passing the exams and getting high grades back then. In my first semester in college, I've learned that you will never survive if you are ill-spirited, proscrastinator, lazy and weak student. I've learned that college is survival and in survival, you should not come with unnecessary gears. I'm sorry Taylor Swift but in college, you should not bring a knife to a gun fight.😃

14. It's okay to have few friends atleast they are real. Making friends is hard and no one can convince me otherwise. People's intentions to you are confusing nowadays and it's hard to trust another set of new people. I've realized that the amount of friends has nothing to do about how you enjoy your life. What's important is that you have friends who are honest as the day is long.

15. Listen more, say less. This year I've learned the value of lending ears to those who are in need of it and even to situations that require much understanding before saying an opinion to avoid any conflict. Do not be easily carried away by your emotions to the extent that you're no longer thinking if what you are going to say is appropriate to the situation. On the other hand, there are times that people who are venting out their problems do not need any piece of advice, what they need is someone who is understanding enough to spend time listening to their rants.

16. Things that are gonna make your life more interesting are things that you should say yes to. — Taylor Swift

Progress doesn't come in the blink of an eye. You need to challenge yourself to do new things in order to make a progress. It is even more okay to step out of your comfort zone sometimes in order to grow. Life will be more interesting when you accept challenges with conviction.

17. Follow accounts on social media who are good for your mental health. Do yourself a favor and start unfollowing accounts that triggers your anxiety, insecurity and self-doubt. Your feed should only contain things that motivates you and people that inspires you to be like them. It should not be a place to start who-did-it-better or who's-best-at-life competitions.

18. Acceptance takes time. I have learned that it is okay to still question things that happened to you 6 years ago. It's okay to still cry everytime it pops up in your head, it's okay if you are not a hundred percent healed and it's okay to have a mind with not enough understanding about the situations that you've been to even if it happened a long time ago. God put you there for a reason. You have to keep in mind that acceptance has no definitive time frame. Healing doesn't wait for you to be ready for it. It will just happen.

19. Procrastination can ruin your goals in life.

There will be no further explanation, there will just be procrastination. 😎

#writers on tumblr #writing inspiration #creative writing #spilledthoughts #2019 #2019taughtme #taylorswift #artistsontumblr #calligraphy

1 note · View note

themikewheelers · 6 years

Note

So..have you noticed how it's become sort of like a trend to call mileven "toxic". I know you've talked about this before but I've seen it so much since then. People jumping on the "bash mileven" wagon. Most of them are byler (not all) shippers, and they always end their argument w/ "Mike should be with Will!!" Even some freaking "madwheeler" shippers.. lol what?? Sorry for ranting but it's just been annoying me greatly.

I’m gonna be honest I don’t really like talking about this stuff because it makes me uncomfortable, so if ideally people could not send a bunch of asks in response to this that’d be great lol, but here’s just the main arguments I always see for why Mileven is toxic and why they make no sense

1. “Eleven isn’t ready for a relationship after everything she’s been through.”

This one is absolutely a valid concern for their relationship. Mike and Eleven both are extremely traumatized, so of course that raises the question whether they’re both ready to handle a relationship. However, as of the canon show and what we’ve seen so far, there’s been nothing that shows or implies that their mental health is causing any problems in their relationship, or that their relationship is causing any problems for their mental health. Of course it’s a potential problem that could arise for them, but nothing that has happened in the show implies it and it’s not something that inherently will happen. There’s many mentally ill people in the world who feel like their illness limits their ability to hold a healthy relationship, but there’s also mentally ill people who are still capable of healthy relationships. For some mentally ill people, their relationships are actually really good for them and their health. Making generalizations that it’s impossible for either of them to handle a relationship after the things they’ve been through is not only false, but offensive to mentally ill people and trauma survivors.

This argument also, in my experience, goes hand in hand with people infantilizing El. They treat her as a toddler who doesn’t have any emotional maturity after the lab. I will just say this, we know next to nothing about what happened to El in the lab. She had a very sheltered life and as a result has many gaps in knowledge, but she also had 12 years worth of experiences in there she matured through. We don’t know exactly what happened to her, but she wasn’t just staring at a wall sucking her thumb for years. She is a very mature person for her age and she is not a toddler just because she doesn’t have the education most people her age do. We don’t know what happened to El in the lab, and we can’t make assumptions about it to try and prove a point.

2. “Jealousy makes for an unhealthily relationship”

Possessiveness is a sign of a toxic relationship. Excessive jealousy is a sign of a toxic relationship. Regular jealousy, however, is not. Every person on the planet gets jealous sometimes, in fact it’s a very healthy emotion in small doses, and at some point in every relationship jealousy will surface, whether small or large, because it is a natural unavoidable emotion. Eleven is a very insecure person, and after being separated from Mike for a year, she comes back to see him talking and laughing with another girl. I don’t think that kind of jealousy is a sign of a toxic relationship, I think that’s a pretty normal reaction from her and a lot of people would have felt the same. If that kind of jealousy became super prevalent or excessive or in any way became an influential part of their relationship, that would be toxic, but as of right now it’s nothing more than a one-time occurrence of a 13 year old girl feeling insecure as a normal reaction to her circumstances.

Also, I would make the argument that Eleven’s jealousy over Max isn’t purely romantic jealousy over Mike, but I discussed that more here

3. “Their relationship is too intense/dramatic.”

Mike and Eleven’s relationship, at least from what we’ve seen so far, is 100% very intense and dramatic. But that’s not exactly a toxic thing because there’s context behind it. In almost every single interaction we’ve seen them have, they’ve been plunged into various life-or-death situations where everything is intense. When you’re in that kind of high-stress situation, all emotions become more intense. So yes, when you look at Mike and El, during all the times they’ve almost died or lost each other, they’ve been very dramatic about their feelings. Dramatic emotions for a dramatic situation. But if you look at the times they’ve interacted where there is no dangerous life-or-death situation going on, they really are not that intense. Look at the Snow Ball, that’s one of the only scenes we get where the kids are in a normal, casual situation, and in it Mike and El are acting just like any other relationship between 13 year olds. Obviously if the two of them were all “I can’t lose you again” or “I never gave up on you” in a casual everyday basis, that would be weirdly intense, but there’s nothing unhealthy about acting emotional in an emotional situation.

4. “They’re too clingy/attached/dependent and being separated caused Mike to go into a bad place”

This one kind of goes along with the last one, but it all comes down to the context. Yes, when Mike and El were separated it really messed them both up a lot, but I wouldn’t say that’s toxic because it makes sense for their situation. From El’s perspective, she’s been in total isolation for almost a year. She hasn’t been able to leave a small 2-room cabin in the woods for months, only interacting with one other person, who’s gone most days anyway. Of course it starts to drive her a little up the wall, and of course she’s going to miss her best friend. Then from Mike’s perspective, he thought El was dead. In fact, he thought he watched her die. Grief really messed him up in season 2. It didn’t help that he didn’t even know if she was actually dead or not, and that obscurity is what led to him doing stuff like calling out for her just in case she was alive. Mike was absolutely a mess in s2, but that wasn’t because El was gone, it was because he was in grief over the fact that she was presumed dead. Those are not the same things. If going into grief when someone you care about dies means you’re dependent on them, then sure, Mike is dependent on El. And honestly, I’d make the argument that Mike’s depression in season 2 was not solely a result of losing El. It was also a result of a lot of trauma, along with the stress of having to keep it a secret and therefore not being able to process it.

Again, context is important. El didn’t just hop on a bus and go, “Bye Mike I’ll see you in a year!” She literally exploded in front of him, and then had to go into total isolation for months and months. If in future seasons when things return to a more casual and normal setting Mike and El are still super clingy and attached, then that would be a cause for concern, but them acting that way in the context of s2? 100% normal (and healthy)

Mike and El’s relationship, at least from what we’ve seen now, is not toxic. Maybe in the future it will become unhealthy, but there is the potential for that in all relationships on the planet. No relationship is 100% perfect and they all have the potential for problems because people themselves are not perfect, and everyone has their rough edges that can cause problems when trying to form a life with someone, there’s not such thing as two people being a “perfect fit.” But that is not the same thing as toxic. Nothing in Mike and El’s present relationship has shown that they are in anyway unhealthy or damaging to each other. Arguments like this do nothing but belittle actual toxic relationships. Posts about it really are nothing but parts of petty “ship wars” or people feeling threatened that a ship they dislike is popular, but there’s lines not to cross, and throwing around labels like that meaninglessly crosses them.

But on a more positive note I’ll just say this. Mike and Eleven’s relationship has been built on three key factors: commitment, honesty, and loyalty. They’ve been shown to be completely supportive of one another and want nothing but to ensure the other’s safety and happiness. Beyond just having good chemistry, the two of them have demonstrated having a surprisingly healthy and mature relationship for their age through their dedication to one another.

#stranger things #stranger analysis

91 notes · View notes

cherrysunshinepleasantries-blog · 5 years

Text

Just some thoughts

I’ve never given much thought to being gay.

I suppose that is something to be positive about, selfish even, for me to admit this. I am able to receive this privilege because of our ancestors, who have fought and died for everyone who has suffered because of fate for what many people today consider a ‘trend’.

It’s a weird initiative, on the second day of 2019.

Not something I was expecting.

I woke up this rather late this morning, short hair sticking up in a rather uncanny resemblance of the result of electric socket, red-and-white checked pyjamas crawling up my legs, to a text from one of my best friends.

Of course, she’s such a genuine, loyal friend that there obviously has to be a catch – she lives half a world away.

I’d texted her the night before about something random, something unimportant, a pastime I was considering signing up for.

I wasn’t predicting her response.

I’ve known she’s been gay for a while, she told me years ago in passing conversation. Of course – there’s always a catch. As someone who was so invested in religion (and of course we’re all aware of people’s interpretations from the Bible, and the results of these interpretations) - I’m sorry to say I was one of those people who didn’t react in the best way.

I would never have told her in person (or screen, technically), but my initial internal reaction was something to be ashamed of. I felt bile in my stomach, rocking and splashing like an uncontrollable wave. To continue with the awful water metaphor, I felt like a ship lost on the waters. I wasn’t even a ship – more like a small rowing boat. No, wouldn’t even grant myself that. We’ll leave that metaphor open to your own interpretation.

Then everything changed.

I know that may sound a little dramatic, but it’s true. Basically add every cliché idiom you can think of, and that’s your answer, leading me to who I am today, a huge supporter of the LGBT+ community, who have taught me so much.

However, today I have learned I am still desperately ignorant.

I’m so lucky to be able to say this, and until today I never realised how much, but my loved ones (maybe excepting my grandparents) would be extremely supportive of me, especially my parents. My parents are Christians, or have been raised Christian at least, but, again, I am so lucky that I have never received strict, immoral dogmatic teaching. My parents have let me make my own decisions regarding my faith, never forcing anything on me, and I will be eternally grateful. After all my parents and I been through; I can say this in great confidence. Of course, I would have my fair share of people who wouldn’t be okay with it, but, as Dodie Clark says “the people who don’t matter, mind, and the people who do matter, don’t mind.” I’m okay with losing friends. I have enough people to love me, including myself.

Well, most of my friends are gay so that’s a bonus.

Speaking of friends, my friend confided in me, and told me that she’d come out to her parents and immediate family, and some took it well, others didn’t. I’m pretty sure one of them essentially disowned her.

I’m calling myself out for being ignorant again – but she always seemed so confident in her sexuality I’d assumed everyone knew.

It makes me so angry.

The last ‘coming out’ experience I had – it was an accident, my friend let it slip, she was drunk, but I’m in such a position of privilege I’m okay when people mention it. I mean I’m a walking gay stereotype – I was in a black pinafore and my hair was chopped to my collarbone a few hours previous. Also, when I’m around girls I adore, I’m so gay.

I’d seen him on and off, but I’d got friendly with him at the last party I was at, and we just started talking at this one too. A girl had asked to kiss me, but she was drunk and personally, it’s not something I’m okay with – whether from my past or from my own insecurities.

I’m pretty sure he referred to it as ‘sexy’. I mean, I’m not sure what to make of that. Personally, I would have no problem with that comment, but I know others detest it. I’ve just never been bothered with comments about who I have the potential to fall in love with. I can fall in love with anyone and everyone, as long as they have a good heart and a great personality - to be honest. It just takes me a while.

I’m pretty sure the worst I’d get would be “we don’t agree but we love you anyway”. I know, in the perspective of many people, that would be the worst thing in the world to hear, and I’m not disregarding that at all, oh my goodness no, no one deserves to hear that, it’s just I’ve reached a point where the people who would say that couldn’t hurt me anymore than they already have – albeit unintentionally.

I know it sounds like a pathetic, half-hearted excuse when I say this, but trust me, in this instance, and the instance before, it’s a generational thing. It’s not something I agree with, and they know this, but in return, I love them anyway.

I’m not promoting toxic or abusive family relationships, and if you’re in one, please do what’s best for you, but I know my family are honest, moral people at the core and although we may have disagreements, as any family does, they can believe what they wish in regards to this – and I know the truth (as I like to say). In a sense, they’re like how I was, the difference is I’ve learned what I was unintentionally doing was completely harmful and had resulted in one of the worst prejudices to shift.

I’m also not blaming religion. I was raised Catholic, I know what people teach, and I’m not going to disregard their beliefs (I am going to, personally) because I remember how much self-hatred the Bible caused me, or rather, the people who hid behind the Bible, using it as a weapon. I hate that I have to remind people of this, but the core of the bible, the most important commandment, as reported in the Sermon of the Mount by Matthew, states “Love your God, and love your neighbour as yourself”. It also states “Love is fulfilment of the Law” – the Law representing the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, and Mosaic Law, which consists of almost the entirety of Leviticus, and referenced many times throughout the Old Testament.

I’m not going to go into detail about the amount of verses on love, but trust me, as someone who has read the Bible quite a few times as a kid (never forced – I was a inquisitive child), there are loads.

Jesus befriended and showed compassion to everyone.

People can’t use religion as an excuse.

I’m sorry, but it’s invalid.

Also, if we want to talk Leviticus, we can discuss the mistranslation from the original writings to the books we have and hold dear today.

I suppose, I’m a cautionary tale in a sense – or rather, who I was becoming. I urge you, don’t be like me. Don’t use the Bible as a weapon. Talk to people who aren’t ‘like you’. Ask them questions. Learn. Education is the most valuable asset, and too many people aren’t granted that opportunity. In Western culture, we have this. It’s not right to misuse it.

And maybe, a bit of empathy goes a long way - from both sides of the debate. I understand completely why that might not be possible, in no way am I insinuating they deserve to treat you like that, but sometimes (like me) - it can be a lack of understanding rather than anything else. Please be open to that.

For anyone who is confused about their sexuality, or gender, or even nothing to do with the LGBT+, such as body positivity, mental illness, and are confused about anything under the sun, I’m here for you. You aren’t alone.

I can be ignorant about some topics, particularly gender, it’s an area I’ve never questioned, but I urge you to teach me. Tell me how you feel. Tell me if I misgender you (I will never do anything like that on purpose, I can promise that). Teach me so as I don’t make the same mistakes. Tell me how I can help you. In return, go easy on me. I’m not going to deny it, I will have lapses in judgement and I will make mistakes. There’s no debate. I ask of you, give me the opportunity to learn. And, in future, if someone may display any ‘minor’ prejudice, a strange look as you hold your partner’s hand, confusion when you ‘come out’ for the twelfth time to the new friends you’ve made, an accidental slip of the tongue – please treat them with kindness (just don’t put yourself in danger). They may be eager to learn too.

<3 x

#mental health #lgbtpride #thoughts

1 note · View note

musical-chick-13 · 5 years

Text

Okay, it’s Personal(TM) Time.

This has been on my mind for awhile, and since my url has the word “musical” in it, but I don’t actually talk about music in-depth a whole lot on here, I thought now was as good of a time as any to put this out there.

I talk about suicidal ideation and other ugly mental illness things under the cut, so I’m putting that as a content warning both here and in the tags.

So, as many people who regularly pay attention to my blog probably know, I have dealt almost my entire life with multiple concurrent mental illnesses, which has, to put it bluntly, been an utterly hellish experience that has made even existing as a person very hard sometimes.

There have been many times I have felt hopeless, incapable of moving, or borderline-numb to reality. There have been times I have felt angry at the concept of existence itself because mine was so hard for me. There have been times I have been so full of rage due to my brain hellscape and the inability to function the way I wanted that I was incapable of connecting with other people or doing my job or feeling any kind of positive feelings toward myself.

And there were, yes, a lot of times where I thought that killing myself might be the answer. I made a plan. I made a back-up plan. I fantasized about how I and everyone around me would be free from all of my gross, mental illness hell if I were no longer alive.

But the one thing that always got me through was music. Always. Whether it was me focusing on practicing or finding catharsis through songs that understood my feelings, that was what kept me going. That was what kept me from giving up performing, and that was what kept me alive.

I say this because there has been...a rather distressing trend I’ve seen in terms of how we view certain types of music. Although, in this particular case, I’m only going to talk about one band (or, I guess, more specifically, one person, in particular).

I know it’s probably way too late to talk about this, but I’m going to anyway.

The band in question is Linkin Park. The man, of course, is Chester Bennington.

For anyone who might not be familiar with this whole situation, Linkin Park is a rockish-metalish band (I’m not good at classifying genres of music and I don’t want people to yell at me) that has been around for a pretty long time. They were a pretty big deal when I was in middle/high school, and were actually one of my first positive experiences with music that was not Tchaikovsky or Mozart or musical theatre. They were known for making loud, emotional songs that were filled with pain, angst, and other unsubtle, ugly feelings. And then in 2017, Chester Bennington, their lead singer, killed himself.

I had seen so many memes joking about this band’s “overdramatic” or “wangsty” or “first world problems white boy” music. But...Chester actually felt all of those things. I felt all of those things. That extreme exemplification of pain and rage and sadness and emptiness and self-hatred was exactly what I felt all the time because that’s exactly how suicidal ideation feels.

And there were so many people talking about how “He’s singing about his youthful angst when he has no reason to have any, his life is fine.” But his life was not fine. His life was so not-fine that he decided he’d literally rather die.

I got that a lot, too. People who asked me why I was so upset all the time. People who told me they wished they were me, with my good grades and parents who were still together who loved me. There was nothing wrong with my life. I was just afraid and sad for no reason. I was “crazy.” “Overdramatic.”

But it was music like this, music that understood how I felt, music that I could use as an outlet that made me feel less like an ungrateful, melodramatic, bratty young person and more like a human being who deserved to be listened to, that got me through. This was what I listened to, and this was what I needed when I was having a mental breakdown at two am thinking about what would happen if I dropped out of school and lived as a dirty wilderness hermit at best and just never woke up again at worst.

And I see this all the time. People criticize so much punk or modern rap or “emo” music (and I’m not talking about genuinely unhelpful, counterproductive pieces like “Sad!” by XXX) for being “too needlessly sad” and “self-indulgent in angst” or “overly-loud whining about nothing.” They dismiss music like this as overly-glorified teenagers/young adults complaining about how their parents won’t buy them the newest iphone. And, yeah, inevitably, some music will be that. But so, so much of it is not.

You can’t listen to Chester Bennington’s entire personal, pain-ridden output and then tell me it makes no sense that he was suicidally depressed. There’s a reason his and the band’s music spoke to me. There’s a reason I still cry about his death on a regular basis. Because that very easily could have been me. And I hate to think about any other person dealing with this and coming to the conclusion that that was the answer.

And maybe, next time someone says they’re dealing with stuff, even if things seem “okay” on the surface...believe them. Don’t write them off as just having trivial, insignificant problems that aren’t real. If someone wants to listen to angsty teen pop or make angsty teen pop, just let them. Because that might be what’s keeping them from imploding. (Again, this does not excuse toxic, abusive, or ableist attitudes, and things like “Sad!” absolutely deserve to be criticized. This also does not mean we coddle people who think “white boy” is a racial slur or who feel insulted if someone calls them out for making rape jokes. I’m talking about the young people who listen to, like...Green Day and MCR and Linkin Park and all of the “angsty emo” bands that people typically think of.)

And, for the love of God, don’t ever, ever tell someone dealing with mental illness that they have no good reason to be upset, that they’re just being ungrateful, or that other people have it worse. If someone is is pain, accept that they are in pain. Don’t gaslight them, don’t shame them, don’t invalidate them, don’t mock them, and don’t belittle or take away their genuinely healthy coping mechanisms.

I’ve seen a lot of hate get leveled at Linkin Park and similar bands for venting their frustrations “overdramatically.” It’s time that stopped.

And for anyone struggling with this: you don’t deserve to feel like this. What you feel is real, and I’m sorry that is your reality. This is your sign to stay alive. To not give up. You are loved, and I can promise you that the world would be less without you. You are not alone, and you will get through this. You will come out on the other end, you will recover, and I will be standing to greet you. I am proud of you for making it this far, and please, please don’t give up on your dreams. Stay alive. I love you.

#tw: suicide mention #tw: ableism #depression #mental illness #linkin park #chester bennington #mc13 gets personal

9 notes · View notes

earlgreyandadderall-blog · 6 years

Text

Hellooooooo!

Hi there Internet people (or most likely like, five friends, my mom, and my aunt who are reading this because I posted it on Facebook), and welcome to my blog!

If you didn't link to this directly from my Facebook, and can’t tell by my blog name (which maybe you can’t, because a fancy tea and a drug people take to pull all-nighters is a super vague name for a website), this blog is all about my life as a girl who has ADHD. I’m twenty-two years old, in my final year of my international relations degree, and will be starting law school in September. I’ve always been a top student, did competitive Irish dance from grade one to grade twelve, have worked in political activism since I was fifteen, and hope to one day work on Track II Diplomacy and truth and reconciliation initiatives in Northern Ireland. Two months ago, I was also diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Lemme tell you- that explained A LOT. Like, A WHOLE LOT. The last two months may have been the most important of my life, as I’ve finally started getting effective treatment (four years after the first time I saw a doctor for my mental wellbeing). Now I start my day with 10 mg Adderall XR, and have spent a lot of time figuring out not-medicinal ways to further improve my life and make my world work the way I need it to. I’ve been thinking about starting a YouTube channel or a blog for the last week or so, so- here I am!

What made me decide to start this blog? There are three reasons.

#1 - NEW EXCITING PROJECT! ADHD brains love new exciting projects.

...there’s nothing deeper to this. I just really wanted to make a blog.

#2 - There are so few resources out there for women and girls with ADHD, and the articles and studies you will find are super super boring and just repeat the same information over and over again. “Many girls with ADHD aren’t diagnosed until post-secondary!” “The needs of girls with ADHD get overlooked because they aren’t disruptive and often do well in school!” Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. Honestly, I learned more about my own experiences and what I’ve been struggling with my whole life from one woman’s YouTube channel (HowToADHD is absolute MUST for women and girls with this diagnosis; it changed my life) than I did from my psychiatrist, psychologist, and every article about ADHD in girls that I could find on the internet. I wanted to create content that’s fun, relatable, and actually helps other girls like me understand what’s going on inside their heads and how to deal with it.

#3 - Honestly, I wanted to create a more positive representation of ADHD in girls than what I’ve been seeing on social media lately. What I’m about to say might not go down well with everyone in the mental health/disability community, but frankly, I don’t care. The general mental illness community on social media is toxic as hell. I first encountered this in high school, when I briefly had a recovery Instagram while I was struggling with anorexia. (By the way, did you know that girls with ADHD are at a higher risk of developing an eating disorder than other girls?) For every account that genuinely encouraged recovery and celebrated their victories while being transparent about their struggles, there were four accounts asking for tips on how not to gain weight when you’re hooked up to a feeding tube. I’ve heard from other people that there is a similar toxicity in the community around chronic illness and chronic pain. I follow this super brave and strong girl named Daisy on instagram, who has Ehlers-Danlos and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (which apparently is literally the worst pain the world). She recently shared that she had to leave all of the “support” groups for chronic pain that she was in on Facebook because they were breeding a culture that encouraged people to stay at home in bed and mope rather than to continue seeking out the best possible treatments and live the fullest live that they possibly can. I hate to say it, but lately I’ve noticed the same sort of trend among people who have ADHD. It’s almost hard to believe that me and some of the people I’ve observed on Facebook and Tumblr have the same diagnosis. This is harsh but I’m just gonna say it- there is an awful trend of people with ADHD refusing to take accountability for their behaviour or to realize that just because you have a neurodevelopmental disorder does not mean that you can never ever be the person in the wrong. ADHD is an explanation for certain behaviours, not an excuse. Because of my ADHD, I have done things and treated people in ways that I am not proud of, but having ADHD does not excuse this behaviour. I was overjoyed to finally get an explanation for why I act the way I do sometimes- especially one that is as highly treatable as ADHD is. I wasted no time looking into strategies for coping with the unique struggles that I have and working on the resultant bad behaviours. There was not one moment of sadness over this diagnosis- just a relief that I finally had somewhere to start my journey towards being better. Beyond just using it as an excuse for everything, I’ve also seen a huge trend of people being more focused on self-pity than on self-care and self-improvement. These are the moments that I am really, really glad that I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 22. Do I wish I knew about Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria before I let my experience with it push away my best friend to the point that he blocked my number for six months? Of course I do. Do I regret losing an entire academic year because I couldn’t motivate myself? Do I wish I knew I wasn’t just being lazy, because maybe then I wouldn’t have been ashamed to ask for help? Obviously. But despite that, I’m glad I wasn’t diagnosed as a child or a teenager. Why? Because I grew up believing I was just like everyone else else. I grew up without a reason to think that I couldn’t do anything anyone else could do. I’m glad I didn’t grow up with an easy excuse for every mistake I made. I’m glad my parents never felt the need to go easy on me and I’m glad I wasn’t weighed down by this idea that I was inherently incapable of achieving my lofty goals. Was it really, really, REALLY hard sometimes? You bet. Did I often wonder why I couldn’t focus like everyone else could, or why relationships were so hard for me? Of course I did. But I’m glad I never had the opportunity to sit back and say “well I just can’t do it because I have ADHD and that’s that.” Would I have graduated high school with a 95% GPA if I had been diagnosed as a child? Would I have pushed myself to take a full French program in university when I only had grade 12 core French? Would I have written the LSAT, and scored a 162 even though I barely studied for it? Probably not, because looking at the ADHD community that I’m a newcomer to, I have a sinking feeling that I wouldn’t have pushed myself half as hard as I did. Being forced to muddle through and try to keep up with no help for as long as I did instilled in me the best gift possible: a positive attitude, and a firm belief that I can do anything I set my mind to.

So what does that have to do with this blog? Well, I wanted to create a space where ADHD is not seen as something that necessarily holds us back. I want to encourage approaching life with ADHD with a positive attitude. I want this to be a space where fellow ADHD brains can come for tips on studying for the LSAT and MCAT, share the workouts and sleep hygiene that help them focus, and talk about how they prepare things the night before so they don’t forget anything in the morning- not a space where people come to complain about how unfair it is that your boss wasn’t understanding of the fact that you were 25 minutes late for work. I’m not saying having ADHD isn’t a huge challenge, or that sometimes, despite our best efforts, we aren’t going to mess up. Because we are. A lot. And I’m not saying it’s not okay to be bummed out about those mess ups, or to sometimes feel like life isn’t fair. But instead of focusing on the negative, I want to focus on encouraging, empowering, and helping each other to never give up and to not let those occasional mess ups become what defines us.

I’m going to try to post once a week, but with exam season upon us, I can’t guarantee that that will happen- at least not right away. However, despite the ADHD tendency to abandon projects, this is something I’m really passionate about, so I’m going to try to post here as often as possible. In the next couple of days I’ll be making a post about common ADHD symptoms in girls that are often overlooked if we don’t fit the “typical” disruptive, hyperactive image of a kid with ADHD.

Until next time!

22 notes · View notes

focusontheeasternlightning-blog · 5 years

Text

How Does She Go Through Dark Days After Losing Money?

By Xiaomei, Taiwan

Once, when one of my regular customers met me, he said to me, “Wow, you look very different now. In the past, you worked day and night to earn money, and looked spiritless.

But now, your whole mental attitude has changed and completely different from before. How did you do this?” When I heard these words, I gave thanks to God from my heart, and tears rolled down my cheeks freely. Scene after scene of the past days drifted into my mind …

Striving to Shake off Poverty

My parents are uneducated and didn’t have any workmanship, so we lived a tough life when I was little. Because of poverty, my clothes were usually full of patches, and my classmates always laughed at and belittled me, which brought great harm to my young heart. To feed our family, my father often labored to drive the pedicab; my mother sell tofu from early morning till late evening in the winter when the temperature was twenty degrees below zero and she often became blue and black with cold all over, but she still couldn’t earn much money. For the sake of money, they always frowned with worry and sighed in despair. Seeing all of this, I felt so bad and told myself: Once I grow up, I will be above others, make lots of money, and give them a better life.

After graduation from junior high school, I left home to work. I had worked as a dishwasher, a waitress in a restaurant, and later I became a worker in a shoe factory. In order to earn more money there, I overworked every day, sometimes even up to 15 or 16 hours. During my work time, I had to be exposed to the toxic glue and the factory was stuffy, so after a period of time, I began to feel dizzy and there was something wrong with my sense of smell, but for the sake of money, I still gritted my teeth to persevere. Besides, I ate and dressed simply to save money. However, even so, I still hadn’t saved much money by the end of the year. Counting the money I had, I was anxious: If I continued in this way, when would I be able to lead a life where I am above others?

Just when I felt my future was bleak, by chance, I saw a technical school that was taking on new trainees, and I signed up for classes to learn massage. Through hard study, I became a professional masseuse and then worked in a big massage parlor. There were lots of workers at the parlor, so the competition was fierce. To keep my customers, I had to massage each one of them with all my might. Because I was thin and weak, sometimes at the end of the day I was even too exhausted to raise my arm or roll over. But, to earn more money, I never missed a day of work. Moreover, as long as my colleagues did not want to work when I was off, I would cover their shifts, and even though it was at midnight, I would go and would not lose a single customer. Due to a long period of sleep deprivation and irregular diets, I got gastroenteritis and always felt pain in my chest when breathing. Sometimes, my hands hurt so seriously that I could not even hold chopsticks when I wanted to eat, and sometimes I ached all over so badly that I could not sleep. All these illness and pain made me suffer an unspeakable amount. But at the thought that the accumulation of money in my bank account was increasing by the month, then as if seeing a happy life was closer to me, I was still happy in my heart and felt that it was worth it.

Due to working day and night in that way, I finally had some savings. Gradually, I went to beauty parlors, haunted posh restaurants, and also bought some famous brand clothes and handbags for myself. I led the life where I was above others as my wish, and my mother did not need to toil anymore. When I went home to visit my relatives and friends, they all admired and looked highly upon me, which made me feel especially proud. Afterward, when I saw some of them bought houses and cars in the city, I was unwilling to fall behind and also bought a new house there. By then, my years of hard work had finally paid off—I had a superior material life and others’ respect and praise. This made me securer in the belief that money talked and that without money one could do nothing.

Years later, I re-planned my future and decided to run some small business in my hometown with my savings. But only then did my mother tell me that all my savings had been lost in the business she once carried on with her friends. This news hit me like thunder from a clear sky—to the point that I even wanted to die. I complained about my mother within over and over again. “Years of my hard-saved money have gone down the drain; what should I do in the future? Without money, how will I survive?” In that period, I wanted neither to eat, nor to talk. I felt very depressed and anguished in my heart. My mother, who was outgoing, also suffered cruelly in this matter, and became reticent. After a period of despondency, I decided to pick myself up where I left off. I encouraged myself: “As long as the green hills last, there’ll always be wood to burn. I’m still young; I’ll surely get my money back!” From then on, I worked harder than before, and I even didn’t return home for two years for fear that visiting home would impede my making money.

In the Vortex of Money God’s Salvation Came to Me

One day, my mother phoned to tell me with delight that she had gotten a good piece of news for me, and asked me to return home. Therefore, I asked my boss for one month’s leave. When I arrived home, I found that my mother seemed to have changed into another person: She smiled more, took a positive attitude toward things, and had a better mental outlook. I was curious about how she had such a big change in this two years. When I asked her, she told me that she had accepted the gospel of God’s kingdom; it was God’s words that had changed her.

On the second day, the sisters from the church came to spread the gospel to me. They told me: “God created the heavens, the earth, all things, and us humans. Everything we enjoy is granted by God. In the beginning, God settled our ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, and they two lived a carefree life. But later, they were enticed and corrupted by Satan, and thus were driven out of the Garden of Eden by God. Since then, we humans have had to sweat and labor to provide for our families. Because our hearts have become distant from God, and that we have lived under Satan’s deceit and corruption, we don’t know how to live a valuable and meaningful life, but only know to pursue money and fleshly desire. Therefore, people of today all lead a tiring and miserable life. Actually, how much money one will possess in one’s life is all in God’s sovereignty and arrangements.” After hearing their communication, I thought it was very fresh and reasonable. I used to hear my mother say “Human fate is ordained by Heaven,” so I also believed that there is a God who rules our fate. And, think about myself: My dream was to earn more money to live a happy life and I had worked hard to realize it all the time. But just because of my mother’s wrong investment, my life went back to square one right away. This let me see that we truly cannot control our own fate. Before they left, they gave me a copy of The Word Appears in the Flesh, telling me to read it more, and to pray to God no matter what happened.

In that period of time, my mother led me to read God’s words and taught me to sing hymns every day. This kind of life was really enjoyable, and I could always feel steady and peaceful in my spirit. So, I told my mother to believe earnestly in God. But as for me, who was still young, I wanted to make more money first, and then I would definitely believe in God with her. One month passed very quickly, and I had to continue busy with my work like a bee. Since I didn’t understand enough truths and always wanted to get back the money others had swindled my mother out of, gradually, I put my belief in God to the back of my mind. One morning I woke up and felt a sharp pain in my left arm; I found I couldn’t move it in any way, nor could I move my left fingers or even straighten my thumb. I became scared and rushed about visiting doctors in all the hospitals in the city, big or small. But, my illness didn’t get any better. The pain had been nagging at me all the time that I couldn’t sleep at night but could only walk back and forth until daybreak. Without any choice, I had to stop my work and go home to rest for a time.

I returned home and the moment I saw my mother, I cried. I asked her: What if I’m disabled for the rest of my life? How can I earn money then? Hearing me say so, she cried heart-brokenly and told me, “Daughter, all of this is because of money. To make big money and live a better life, I invested your hard-earned savings, but as a result, I was almost ruined financially. You have worked hard these years to earn more money, but in the end you get many illnesses at such a young age. Actually, money is just a bait for Satan to ensnare us in the pursuit of wealth to harm us.”

God’s Words Revealed My Erroneous Views on Pursuing

My mother read a passage of God’s words to me: “‘Money makes the world go round’ is the philosophy of Satan and it prevails among the whole of mankind, among every human society. You could say that it is a trend because it has been imparted to everyone and is now affixed in their heart. People went from not accepting this saying to growing used to it so that when they came into contact with real life, they gradually gave tacit approval to it, acknowledged its existence and finally, they gave it their own seal of approval. Isn’t this process that of Satan corrupting man? … Something is revealed through the human disposition of the people in this world, including each and every one of you. How is this interpreted? It’s the worship of money. Is it hard to get this out of someone’s heart? It is very hard! It seems that Satan’s corruption of man is thorough indeed! So after Satan uses this trend to corrupt people, how is it manifested in them? Don’t you feel that you couldn’t survive in this world without any money, that even one day would just be impossible? (Yes.) People’s status is based on how much money they have as is their respectability. The backs of the poor are bent in shame, while the rich enjoy their high status. They stand tall and proud, speaking loudly and living arrogantly. What does this saying and trend bring to people? Don’t many people see getting money as being worth any cost? Don’t many people sacrifice their dignity and integrity in the pursuit of more money?”

After reading God’s words and then thinking of my mother’s fellowship earlier that afternoon, I finally understood why I lived in such pain. It was all because I had accepted the philosophies and theories of Satan—“Money makes the mare go” and “Money isn’t everything, but without it, one can do nothing”—as my laws of survival; I thought I couldn’t live without money—with money I could eat well and dress well, and only when I had money could I live in abundance, could I be outstanding and be looked up to by others. Under the guidance of these wrong viewpoints, I devoted all my efforts to making money for these years. Despite hardship and tiredness, I didn’t let go of any chance to make money as long as l lived. In my extreme exhaustion and weakness, as long as I thought that the amount of money in my bank account was increasing, I would have the strive to hold on. I saw that money had totally controlled my outlook on life and on values, and that I had already become the person who cared more about money than life itself, and who became selfish, despicable, and narrow-minded. When I knew that my savings of these years had been gone because of my mother’s wrong investment, I developed a hatred for her. It turned out that I had unknowingly treated money as the pillar of life. When I understood these factors and thought of my present situation of health, I realized that I shouldn’t throw away my life in exchange for money anymore, and I decided to take a rest for some time. Then, I lived a church life with brothers and sisters. What made me excited was that my illnesses, which were not cured after such a long time of seeing doctors, had been cured before I knew it. I felt this was God’s protection and care of me. Thanks be to God!

Once, during a gathering, a sister read a passage of God’s words: “When one has property, one thinks that money is one’s mainstay, that it is one’s asset in life; when people have status, they cling tightly to it and would risk their lives for its sake. Only when people are about to let go of this world do they realize that the things they spent their lives pursuing are nothing but fleeting clouds, none of which they can hold onto, none of which they can take with them, none of which can exempt them from death, none of which can provide company or consolation to a lonely soul on its way back; and least of all, none of which can give a person salvation, allow them to transcend death. Fame and fortune one gains in the material world give one temporary satisfaction, passing pleasure, a false sense of ease, and make one lose one’s way. And so people, as they thrash about in the vast sea of humanity, craving peace, comfort, and tranquility of heart, are subsumed again and again beneath the waves. When people have yet to figure out the questions that it is most crucial to understand—where they come from, why they are alive, where they are going, and so forth—they are seduced by fame and fortune, misled, controlled by them, irrevocably lost.”

When I read this passage of God’s words, I was deeply stirred. In the beginning, I just wanted to live a life where I needn’t worry about food and clothes; but when my living standards improved, I prepared to buy a new house; and when I got a new house, I intended to achieve another goal…. I worked hard for my desires and was lost in them, treating money as my only goal to pursue in life, and even earning money at the cost of my health. As a result, I got gastropathy, scapulohumeral periarthritis, and the tendinitis of supraspinatus muscle. Fully willing to be a money-making machine, I had no mind to think about what kind of life was meaningful and valuable, and what man should pursue in their lives, so that when my mother spread the gospel to me, I had no heart to listen. But only when I was in extreme pain did I experience that God’s words of “the things they spent their lives pursuing are nothing but fleeting clouds, none of which they can hold onto, none of which they can take with them” are the truth and fact. Thanks for God’s guidance. Without the revelation of God’s words that made me understand my view of pursuit was wrong, I would spend my whole life in vain.

In the following days, I actively attended gatherings and read God’s words. I had a feeling of peace and joy in my heart, which I had never tasted before, and which could not be bought with any material thing. Thank God. I must pursue the truth earnestly and walk the true path of life. Later, I quit my former job and found another one which was closer to my home so that I could frequently have gatherings together with sisters and brothers.

When Satan’s Temptation Came Upon Me I Sought the Truth

I was willing to pursue the truth, but almost every time I had a gathering with brothers and sisters, my boss would call to tell me to work. At the time, I was conflicted and unhappy in my heart, thinking, “If I don’t go, I will lose my customers, and later I will have no source of income. But I also want to attend gatherings.” For several times, although I attended gatherings, my heart couldn’t be quiet and my spirit was gradually dark. In tears, I prayed to God: “Oh, God! I’m very distressed now. I know clearly that Satan is using money to entice me away from You. I want to get rid of it, but I’m too weak to break myself free from the enticement of money. God! Please save me!” After praying, I felt a bit calmer, and then I read two passages of God’s words: “When one has no God, when one cannot see Him, when one cannot clearly recognize God’s sovereignty, every day is meaningless, worthless, miserable. Wherever one is, whatever one’s job is, one’s means of living and the pursuit of one’s goals bring one nothing but endless heartbreak and irrelievable suffering, such that one cannot bear to look back. Only when one accepts the Creator’s sovereignty, submits to His orchestrations and arrangements, and seeks true human life, will one gradually break free from all heartbreak and suffering, shake off all the emptiness of life.” “After you recognize this, your task is to lay aside your old view of life, stay far from various traps, let God take charge of your life and make arrangements for you, try only to submit to God’s orchestrations and guidance, to have no choice, and to become a person who worships God.”

After I read God’s words, I understood why I was still disturbed by Satan’s temptation when it befell me. It was because my views on human life had yet to be transformed, and that I still wanted to live on the basis of Satan’s viewpoint of “Money isn’t everything, but without it, one can do nothing.” I thought back to the past. When I didn’t know God’s sovereignty, I lived in Satan’s schemes and relied on myself to struggle and make money. Although I had gotten the fleeting enjoyment and temporary dignity, what happened? I was riddled with illness at such a young age, and I would rather die. What was the meaning and value of such a life? Which was truly more important—money or life? I also thought of those rich people around me. Some took drugs, some gambled, some kept mistresses or lovers, some even jumped off the buildings because of emptiness…. Although these people had enough money, their life was a real mess. This adequately proved that the pursuit of wealth is not a good path. Thinking about this, my heart was awakened, and I understood: To obey God, to worship God, and to feel steady and peaceful—these are more important than anything else. I also had the will to forsake my flesh, to change my survival methods which belonged to Satan, to learn to submit to God, and to let God rule over my future.

During gatherings, when my boss called me to work again, I told him I was busy. Gradually, I was no longer controlled by money and felt enormously relieved and happy in my heart.

Epilogue

Although now I can’t live at will like before, what God gives me is already enough for me to live and my health is gradually improving. I read God’s words every day, attend gatherings, and communicate my experiences with brothers and sisters, living a quite steady and peaceful life. It is God who has saved me from the harm of Satan and the temptation of money. Thanks be to God!

#Gospel Testimonies #Return to God #Believe in God

0 notes