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eveningfall · 3 years

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do you have any advice for long distance relationships? how has yours lasted so long and what do you do to stay so close all the time?

I do! I am in no way a professional, nor do I claim to be the best partner out there, not by a long shot, but my girlfriend and I have done long distance for nearly three years and this is some of the most important stuff that stood out to me, under the cut for organization purposes:

(Note: Long Distance Relationships (LDRs) require a huge amount of effort, patience, and emotional closeness between two people and might not be for everyone. My relationship is irreplaceable to me, and I’m choosing to share what works!)

Make plans together, set aside time for one another

Quality time is key in a long-distance relationship. Because the physical aspect is often spaced apart by huge time gaps, emotional bond is a huge part of what makes LDRs special and wonderful.

For example, my girlfriend and I often call after I have a shift at work or while she’s driving to school. I also keep her updated on parts of my day, and we often set aside time to do things together that just involve the two of us. Skype sleepovers, Minecraft sessions and writing parties have been staples in our relationship since we met. Keeping each other in regular parts of our day to day lives helps us feel connected and included, even when we can’t be there in person.

It probably sounds like simple advice but seriously, do things together often and have regular conversations. Video games (or a shared activity) help facilitate bonding when not much is going on to talk about.

affirmations bro, seriously

Anxiety is the side effect of long distance. It’s okay to be scared- scared of being apart for too long and things fading out, scared of being forgotten, scared of the separation itself, etc. The fear comes from an honest place, but whether it’s you or your partner who’s feeling it, try to be rational and avoid the impulsive urge to act on those fears.

Because of this anxiety, LDRs typically require more (and more regular) reassurance than usual. Remind them often that you love them, miss them, or are thinking about them. Comment on the little things they do that you like. Share songs, video links, and memes that remind you of them, or that you’d think they enjoy. Establish your place in each other’s lives over and over again. It takes a special person to be able to cope with the anxieties big and small that come with long distance, but when done right it is incredibly rewarding.

communication

Incredibly, crucially important. You cannot be passive-aggressive or miscommunicate in long distance. Have those tough emotional conversations, don’t be afraid to be honest when you’re angry or if something they’re doing isn’t helping you. You don’t have to resent on another. Instead, be understanding, be patient, and try to come to a place of agreement. The goal is not to break up with each other, neither wants that. Be blatant with what’s on your mind and remember that they love you.

Remember, it’s not you vs your partner. It’s you and them vs the problem.

establish boundaries

While regular interaction is important, like any other relationship your partner must not become the centre of your universe, or you theirs. Allow yourself and your partner to have other friends, spend time with family, and also have time to yourselves. You don’t need to always be talking.

Jealousy, possessiveness and feelings of exclusion are three risks when it comes to LDRs. Learn to be apart just as much as you learn to be together, and alternately, also remember to talk to your partner if you genuinely feel left out, forgotten or unwanted. Give each other space, reassure one another and build trust.

Boundaries also apply to the nuances of romance/sexuality. Your partner may or may not experience physical/sensual/sexual attraction in the same way that you do, meaning that your comfort zones could be on the same page or entirely different. Attraction and comfort can also fluctuate! Always make sure you’re both feeling comfortable and safe. Respect and understanding means so much in a relationship.

plan to meet one another eventually

Please note the key word here: eventually! I know that many LDRs face some crazy extenuating circumstances and meeting in person might be a long, possibly expensive way away. Make those plans anyway- whether an actual buy-a-plane-ticket-get-together plan or just the hypothetical.

When you’re so far apart, talking about what you’ll do once you can be together, what your first (or next) hug will be like, how excited you are to see each other one day, are all ways to keep that love and excitement alive whilst also subtly re-affirming the other’s place in your life. Like dude, it’s fun to even make a bucket list with all sorts of plans for what you can do when you meet.

Meeting in person is the best way to know whether you want to be together, and stay that way. There’s nothing wrong with planning it out!

don’t be afraid to say what’s on your mind (aka just get it out there!!)

I would argue that this might be the most important thing. No matter what stage your relationship is at, learn to be vulnerable with one another and get used to being candid, especially romantically. This is especially important in LDRs.

It’s normal when you’re figuring things out to be afraid to say certain things or touch on certain topics because you’re flustered or nervous, but chances are they’re feeling the same things too. This could be anything from saying “I love you” when you want to, asking directly for something (“I kinda wish I could ___ with you”), to not holding back on compliments, needs, or voicing thoughts related to your partner. If you can manage it, say it.

If it makes you feel self-conscious, it’s probably a good thing to share! Not only can they help you work through it, but it’ll encourage you both to be totally comfortable expressing yourselves and your needs. In both the most innocent and more serious ways, learning to trust and be open with one another will be incredibly beneficial in the long run- it means you’ll be able to talk about anything. You have nothing to hide, they won’t judge you :’)

don’t let nsfw (if applicable) be a taboo thing!

Don’t be afraid or ashamed of anything you think or feel when it comes to yourself or your partner. Learn to be comfortable with expressing some of your thoughts and experiences, your likes and dislikes, and anything else with one another. Like everything else, this is a part of who you are and sexual/sensual experiences can be a shared conversation.

A good middle ground when you’re still breaking the ice in this sense is to let yourselves laugh about it. Don’t be shy- make those bad jokes, call each other out and ask risky questions! Like everything else, comfort is key. The less you have to hold back with one another, the more you can laugh and smile and joke where it helps, the more fun and enjoyable those initial moments will be.

And above all else, support your partner’s vulnerability! Certain topics may be harder for you or them. Accept their honesty and chime in with your own thoughts/ideas. It’ll be fun, I promise.

Just for general advice, I would say make even the little moments special. Make a big deal out of the little things, send each other birthday/christmas presents and love the shit out of each other. You can’t always hug or go on dates like an irl couple but keep in mind that the long distance isn’t forever. It’s a real relationship, don’t let anyone discourage it and remember why you chose your person in the first place. That’s the main thing probably? Do whatever feels best for you and your favourite person.

#ldr #ldr couple #ask.jpg #anonnle #this is specifically for relationships but i can do a friend one as well!#lmk if i need to add anything to this #it lowkey became a masterlist huh #I would like to extend a shoutout to my amazing gf actually #she’s always the one encouraging healthy communication and boundaries around each other and I have so much respect for her #she’s a dummy but she’s taught me a lot :(

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lakelewisia · 3 years

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A Lewisian Year

Presented in partnership with the Lewisia Communications Board and Lewisia Public Library

Sponsored by The Historical Society

Hello, readers, listeners, and psychic osmosizers! Welcome to A Lewisian Year, a monthly showcase celebrating the rich culture here in the Lake Lewisia district. Each month, we'll highlight some seasonal events, local celebrations and interpretations of national and world holidays, and historical tidbits.

AUGUST

First Harvests

Today, we're all taking a trip out to the community gardens--no, not that one--not the one over there either--look, Lewisia has a lot of community gardens. This is the garden out by the Old Town train station, where they do all the raised beds made of railroad ties and salvaged metal. Let's go early in the morning, to avoid the worst of the heat. Volunteers are out watering right now, to give the water a chance to sink in, rather than just evaporating, so everything feels damp and cool. Water seeps through the walls of the planters, picking out the runes carved there for bounty and health.

Grab a basket and some clippers. Snip a bundle of basil. Pluck a handful of cherry tomatoes. Be careful when you move the pumpkin leaves aside: they're prickly devils and intent on protecting the growing pumpkins hiding among them. Oh, good eye--you've spotted a summer squash that nearly evaded harvest, and it's already big enough to club someone with. The corn, off on the edges of the lot, rustles invitingly, still green and not yet powerful enough (probably) to steal you away for longer than a few hours.

Everywhere you turn, there is something growing, something coming in ripe and full, something ready to eat like a mouthful of sunlight.

It may seem strange to think of August as harvest season, when most places outside of Lewisia have relegated all thoughts of harvest to the window between Halloween and Thanksgiving. In truth, though, harvest has been going on for months already and will only get more intense as the season wears on. Tomatoes have been filling up bowls on kitchen counters since early summer; zucchini have been terrorizing local neighborhoods nearly as long. Growth does not restrict itself to a season; abundance is not the province of a single holiday.

Oh, and if you see any piles of first fruits or bundles of last leaves set in out-of-the-way places, leave them be. They are offerings of thanks from some well-pleased gardener or lucky forager, who does well to remember that we did not make all we receive and so it is not all ours to take. Gratitude is also not something to be kept to one day a year.

Back to School

On the other hand, there is something Lewisians will delay much longer than the outside world: the return to school. It seems like every year, my own schools resumed classes earlier than the last and summer break got shorter and shorter. By the time I was old enough to take on a summer job as well, the supposed holiday seemed little more than a pause in an otherwise overwhelming schedule. So I was surprised to see the number of children and teens freely roaming the town and surrounding areas so late in the summer, clearly heedless of such considerations as syllabi and new backpacks and locker assignments.

Once again diving into the library's records of the Lewisia Herald, I found a persistent tradition of announcements related to the official start of school and the (much later) actual start dating back to the seventies. Various public announcements indicate compliance with state rules about school days even as they offer--sometimes blatantly--alternative instructions to students about how to spend their dwindling summertime. This subterfuge seems to have been prescient, as the eighties would bring about nationwide hand-wringing over the length of the school day and the school year amid broader anxieties about global competitiveness. But while the outside world focused on using education as a training ground for generations intended for industrial work, Lewisia chose a different path.

A survey from 2003 showed that Lewisian students actually spent more hours on educational activities compared to the general population annually, though they spent fewer hours in classrooms and formal school settings. This becomes less surprising once one becomes accustomed to the Lewisian fondness for clubs and hobbies with a strong basis in hands-on learning, community participation, cultural preservation, and self-directed learning. In short, Lewisians don't need to be chained to a classroom desk from mid-August to mid-June, because they're perfectly happy to learn when left to their own devices.

Editor's Note: we have explained that this is all an elaborate misunderstanding on the part of your columnist. Lewisian schools absolutely resume sessions on the state-approved schedule and all Lewisian students receive the required number of instructional days, including make-up days in the event of weather-related school shutdowns. We have preserved the original, definitely incorrect information in this column for educational purposes only, to be used in a unit on fact-checking by the journalism students, who certainly are not currently out by the waterfront learning to make reed flutes and annoying the shorebirds.

Open House Night

It's only been two months since we focused on housing needs as part of Pride Month, but August gives us a wonderful opportunity to see that need met through the Open House Night. Throughout the region, on the last Friday in August, unoccupied dwellings open themselves up in search of someone who needs to live in them. In the evening, tours are conducted at regular intervals at all the known open houses. Come morning, there are at least a few dwellings no longer standing vacant and a few people no longer in need of stable shelter.

Notably, while the tours and guides help the process along and provide much-needed assistance with the bureaucratic details of documenting a home once one is found, the event itself is not put on by the town or any identified organization. No authority in Lewisia dictates who lays final claim to a dwelling. There is a fundraising arm to the event, however, which is managed by Lewisians. This provides funds for repairs that may be needed on any dwelling that has sat vacant long enough to suffer damage.

Also, despite the name, the event is not restricted to houses. Individual apartment units sometimes come up, and there have been a number of previously-abandoned trailers who took on new inhabitants. Occasionally, even less conventional forms of shelter make themselves known, such as heavily modified shipping containers, houseboats (with or without associated bodies of water), and once, memorably, the discarded shell of an ancient and enormous hermit crab. Mostly, though, people end up with slightly down-at-heel houses that need the care of an occupant as much as the people need a place that will be warm and dry and safe, particularly with winter just around the bend.

The Open House Night is not a systemic solution; it isn't a national solution; it isn't enough of a solution. But sometimes the victories look small from the outside: one person safe and warm, one house full and appreciated. For the houses and the people in them, a victory like that can never seem small.

This Month in History

On the night of August 17th, 1893, the Necessary Observance, a trading ship bound for Mexico, encountered a lightning storm at sea that forced it to seek safe harbor. Unfortunately, the stretch of coast it had been sailing nearest to, due west of Lake Lewisia, was and is a treacherous churn of huge rocks and unexpected shallows unsuitable for any sailing vessel not interested in becoming so much driftwood. As the waves came up on deck and the lightning seemed determined to turn the Observance into a pyre before it sank her, Captain J. R. Meade made the bold choice to seek shelter inland--far inland. The ship's crew included a chronowitch, known only as Hawthorn, who was able to find time traces of the vast body of water that once joined Lake Lewisia with the Pacific Ocean in prehistoric times. Through her herculean efforts, and with the support of the first mate's regular offerings of good whiskey as she worked, the Observance rode that forgotten water many miles inland, all the way into the center of Lake Lewisia, where the weather proved substantially less murderous.

With the chronowitch entirely exhausted from the strain of such a journey, the Observance found herself stranded in the lake for some time. Records differ, in fact, on both when and how the ship eventually made her way back to the ocean and the rest of her interrupted trade run. Since there is not (usually) a centuries-old tall ship stranded in the middle of the lake, evidence suggests they did somehow make the return trip.

That's a taste of what August has to offer us. See you next month, when September brings an anniversary for a local business, a second chance at mail, and one last sunset.

#fiction #microfiction #magical realism #holidays #history #August #Lake Lewisia #demifiction #A Lewisian Year #bonus material

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throughthewwods · 3 years

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Buddhism For Mothers

Finished reading Buddhism For Mothers.

In many ways Buddhism has stayed with me in disposition and philosophically, but the book reminded me of a different time in my life when I actively spiritually practiced. I thought about what a hard last year it was and how often my temper flared clinging to regain control. I’d say I should have read this back then, but I wouldn’t have received it.

As I read, it felt a call to my roots with a greater wisdom than I had in my teens to 20′s. I appreciated and sheepishly related to the author’s observation about much of the New Age subculture missing the mark when all that mediation, all that pursuit of consciousness and altered states is still about self gain, self interest.

I remember when I first became a mother and decided to get my sh!t together in many regards. I did not have the self-discipline to be both a flowy, unconditionally compassionate Buddhist with no interest in material illusions and... decide to be of the world. The internal conflict would eat away at me. I did not know how to live in the moment and fervently follow through on my goals. I did not know how to not be ‘of the world’ and simultaneously plot a future in it. Even now, I know I put Buddhism away because I realized I had to be all in or what I wanted wasn’t going to happen. I needed to be attached, invested. I had, have desires, which is not very Buddhist...

But... I also had so much fear back then. I pushed away everyone and every ideology that weakened my inner resolve. Now... I’m in a better place. Of course, my inner Buddhist reminds me that more things will happen, challenges, joys, and they will all flow through my cupped hands..

Still, this feels a good resting place along the path to rediscovering quieting the mind,

a time to sooth the anxiety discretely ever coursing through my body,

to sit with compassion for all beings and let my heart again soften as a way of life,

to be present: strength how to fully listen, act, and speak with mindfulness,

and reconnect with equanimity.

Other things...

Kiddo’s first week of school went mostly well.

I took her out for a huge french toast breakfast to honor the last day of summer and later for movie night we had a summertime junk food feast sprawled across 2 tables. Morning went smooth. I cooked her up our traditional ‘first day of school chocolate chip pancakes’. Admitted, her ‘last year’ anxiety reignited pretty fast, but I’m wiser this go around to how this program works. We changed gears to art (relaxing), then her teacher’s sunny vibe cheered her up, and she’s been mostly good since. On my part, I’m taking a more involved role about the schoolwork since last year the ‘hands off approach’ was a disaster. It’s not ideal. In-person in a few months would be stellar, but we’ll make the best of the situation. With online-learning she can cozy up under a fluffy blanket while reading her book for class. One day she finished early so I took her out for lunch (her choice). While everyone is stuck in their school desks we were picking out art supplies, enjoying sushi and blue berry muffins while watching Fullhouse.

There was the first counselor session about Kiddo’s grief. I’m not sure how helpful it was, but I do feel relieved to know from a professional’s perspective I’ve been doing a good job. This week we’re going to talk more about my own grief process in hopes it’ll spark some light bulbs on actives I can do with Kiddo.

Today Kiddo and RB went out for breakfast to get some bonus-dad bonding time in. Kiddo wasn’t full of descriptors, yet came back aglow, all bubbles and silliness.

Interview with the grief support non-profit went well. Feeling undecided if I still want to volunteer with the domestic violence support non-profit though. It be a notable training and experience, but their volunteer coordinator seems so accustomed to waves of volunteers thirsty for the position that she has little esteem for the individuals offering offering their time and emotional energy to keep their agency going for the greater community. I’m not sure I want to work somewhere that takes its volunteers for granted. We’ll see. Maybe they’ll surprise me next week?

My first quarter of grad school classes are picked out.

After several bite-sized, scatters convos, RB and I are finally actively looking at houses for our lil, blended family! It’s a complicated, huge change for everybody, but also excited and heart-melt-y to have our relationship arrive to this next phase. This morning we had our first daydream-y talk about what our home would be like.

#journal #my writing #writing #motherhood #parenting #studystudystudy #positivemindset #relationship #love #happylife #happiness #buddhism #meditation #spiritualpath

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juistheseminarian · 5 years

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Eccentric, part 2 : now I’m here

I was planning to be done with this by now - both with this article and with the illness. I can’t believe that it’s been almost 15 years and I still get people congratulating me for acknowledging that I have an issue and going it’s-the-first-step-to-recovery, which they’ve learned was an appropriate thing to say since you don’t want to stand there and be embarrassed like I do with my boyfriend’s mom when she starts crying (which she does a lot). I’ve stirred things and realized things and I intended this to sound like a sort of retrospective from a place of unadulterated success. But guess what!

I ended the last bit on my return from anorexia and lasting relationship with a psychologist I described as abusive, although that may be excessive and may come from the resentment of a long therapy seemingly not having “worked”. I started seeing them around age 12, before the eating disorder really declared, and i was referred to them at the end of an endless session of musical chairs through which I met many, many ‘emergency’ professionals whose schedules couldn’t accommodate another patient. I had to tell the whole story every time as if I were filing a police complaint or justifying an ailment that had long thinned beyond recognition, losing more of its meaning every time; I worried often, and I still do, about making myself sound ill enough to be considered, knowing I was taking their time when they could be curing people with actual issues.

Having been sent to therapy after the school phobia I developed as a 5 or 6-year-old, and then again as a 12-year-old, and on and off ever since, means I’ve barely lived without framing my every breath as something to be treated and fixed, analyzed and made normal, insufficient, dependant, bending the wrong way. I entered this longest bout of therapy as a child and left it a decade later as a child. I believe for the first few years the psychologist was reliable if a little too set in her ways: there was no talk of medication outside of an apparent agreement to exclude it, which comforted my irrational fear of treatment with just as little medical basis as I previously had. However, her patient-based approach helped me feel like this time around it wouldn’t be an issue if I wasn’t “really” anything, or that’s how I viewed it at first. I don’t mean to dismiss the entirety of what happened there, only, you know, the bits where a refusal to diagnose me lead to a refusal to treat me, which in turn lead to desperation to fit me into the superstitious ramblings of an unstable person who refused to treat herself. Fuck that person. Call it what it is.

I resented the amount of information she gave me about herself, the description of her previous marriage leading up to ten years of unhappiness she couldn’t get out of, the description of her current partner’s superior attitude, the way her life was a mess and the way I viewed her as honest instead of genuinely intrusive. She’d offer to pay me to iron her clothes, she’d talk to my teenage self about her finances, about her gynecological health, and I listened, and my mother became concerned. By then she had framed my parents as unable to understand me the way she would, she whose child had run away from home and I had to know all about it, apparently. I defended her.

After the anorexia bit I grew alright for a while. I went to high school, I had a boyfriend, I neglected my own friends in order to make him my first priority at all costs, in short I was playing my role very well. My writing got noticed, as it should be, and I was exempted from english class, as I should be. I was bad at maths, I was good at history, I enjoyed latin class, I had friends I looked cool to because of the whole having had sex thing. Over one year my boyfriend and I had split up and I saw a few boys from my grade, most notably a wreck of a teen who regularly said he could be doing this with any of my friends and prided himself for using me “as an experiment”. When I broke up with him to go have the world’s least satisfactory sex with a friend of his, he called me crying hundreds of times. He had read somewhere that cool people had open relationships so he wanted one: when I took him up on that he said I disgusted him, turned around cause he “couldn’t look at me”, and masturbated in my bed. It was terrific. I was a sheep in shame’s clothing.

There were the “can we do this without a condom”s and the “I want to see you shove that shower up your vagina to clean out the danger and I’m watching you”s and the “I can’t believe you cheated on me”s (he was kind!) and the “I’m storming out of your birthday party because you and your friends are little bitches”s. I don’t like how this is taking the same turn my life took - revolving around boys and men the second it got the chance, which is something I still haven’t worked out today as I live under the constant scrutiny of my several imaginary sugar daddy-leaning role models, but I’m keeping that topic for next time. This is, of course, she says in a white girl voice, about me.

During the last year of high school, the boyfriend and I broke up for good because I had fallen in love with a guy we had met at a music festival and had pursued email after email. I felt glorious cracking the shells of emotionally unstable dudes and making them rely on me for subcontracting introspection: now I take “you’re the closest friend I’ve ever had” as a red flag, poisonous edible paper that dissolves in my water tank and kills me. It seems I do know better now, and it seems no woman ever told me that, and I keep being scared of them, and I keep being gay too, that’s my life’s familiar ghost. I’ve never gone far enough to confront the very real fact of loving women: I saw it as a kid when female nudity made me react, when I didn’t feel any sense of belonging with either boys or girls, when I felt like a monster. That desire is different because I don’t let it exist. Funny i’m only mentioning it now. What’s it like to be out to yourself?

Do you relate to princesses? To female leads? Sometimes I can’t allow myself to replace fictional characters cause how realistic would it be to have the man of the story want to fuck me when my buttcrack isn’t even shaved? Obviously that would never work. Obviously cinderella’s ass is smooth. I never feel polished enough, or good enough an actor, or intelligible enough: expanding like a red giant, I feel like a stomach with needs, and the picture is grotesque - nothing like those Degas ballerinas. Dripping, eating itself, round but not motherly, the hunchback from Ken Russell’s the Devils is too feminine next to me. Suppose i’m fattening from storing all that shame.

***

These days I resent the other diseased. Everyone hates my uncle cause he’s got it too and he drinks and he takes medication that people view with contempt; he lets himself die but it never seems to work even though he acts like it. Somehow something is still barely holding his limbs attached, miraculously, precariously. And my friend’s mother too, brain locked in a hamster wheel, hanging on to people like smeagol consumed, no longer in touch: filtering words like a beekeeper, only letting the crazy in. She makes me afraid to give birth. Would my children grow with a devolved being, Lovecraft’s blind cave-dweller, who once was human and is now condemned to live? Avoiding it in hallways, fearing it under their bed?

By the fourth year of the relationship with festival boy my anxiety had become the decisive factor in every single move I made. I could no longer travel, be spontaneous, laugh, orgasm or breathe. The lump in my throat had grown bigger than I was and my face felt numb, I evaporated, I had emergency doctors drive a camera through my nose only for them to confirm I was choking myself this whole time. It really felt strange: like you’d have tried to swallow turkish delight but it piled up in your throat, invisible. The doctor wrote: patient known for anxiety. I thought: great, now when I die for real they’re gonna think i’m crying wolf and also they’re gonna be right. Fortunately enough, I then was relieved from the constant imminence of choking, you’d never guess how.

I called a therapist my mom had taken me to when i was about 12 and we both liked her a lot - serious and a little intimidating in just the right way, a little soft yet clearly not one to let me bullshit my way out (my mom liked those). I was in the uni hall with some friends when her assistant called me back and scheduled an appointment for me later this same week: it was a huge deal. She remembered me. I suddenly felt safe, suddenly felt myself slip from my own consciousness like the narrator in Janice Galloway’s depression book when she enters a clinic: she’s no longer her own problem, or so she thinks at first, before realizing care never comes in the shape we expected.

I started treatment almost immediately and was in shock at the realization that I did not need to suffer any more. I wasn’t aware, I didn’t KNOW of the existence of medication that would prevent me from spending hours and hours in inescapable pain, contorting my body between screams and frantic sobs, persuaded I was about to die a solitary death that’d leave me to witness my loved ones moving on in relief. Everything around me felt temporary and fleeting and treacherous. And most of all, each of these occasions were a trial for my failure to live, and I sat accused as my chrysalis life developed before me, never free, never daring, hidden, waiting. Every time, I realized how much I was missing out on. Every time I was too tired to seize the day after recovering and just dozed, scrutinized always, for a respite I knew would be short. My idea of living was a xanax in front of any distracting tv show: suddenly sleep was warm, and I wasn’t dying, and things lifted by the tornado gently fell back into place, and disappeared.

(river) Oh, I got plenty of help. Therapists and medications and EMDR and - hypnosis and transcendental meditation. Nothing made me feel better (...) I feel everything. There just wasn’t enough positive emotion to balance me out. (payton: so it wasn’t because of me?) (river) no. you were my only relief. (“the politician” (2019) ep.6)

My trust in festival boy was broken: I felt that if I was ever overcome with the looming fear and froze, he wouldn’t help. I have no idea if it was true: I’m very prone to blaming others for my feeling abandoned, often with no relation to their behaviour. I never could learn his language (i’m sure I can now) and the required travelling to see him became too much, even though we had met through travelling and didn’t feel at home anywhere. This continent of my life was infected and we steeped in sepsis for months and months, resentful, picturing other people when we touched, searching for admiration elsewhere. It’s the worst thing you can do to a bond, demand things from it when it’s dead, as if it was gonna answer. You know it’s been dead for months but when you try and bury it, you can swear you saw it squirm, and then it’s gone, and you took out the doubt.

In this case I didn’t, Martin did. Martin was an old friend I knew through my first partner, and he came back into my life with an exact timing, like he was taking up an offer I was about to throw at someone else. It was all i wanted, car rides at night, feeling desired, watching him on stage, not being shamed. Comfort and help and reassurance, feeling small next to him, and knowing for certain that he understood: everything he says I take seriously, because there’s no way he doesn’t know, I could never lie, and I don’t want to. Well - I omit a little bit since that’s what it takes for me to grow guilt-free: I’m a fangirl and have never felt the need to stop, I let the obsession continent drift and crash, and perhaps it will become submerged and perhaps it won’t. Point is, I can defend it now, all the pieces I feel,I’m no one’s moodboard.

I took a step back and realized I had no way of relying on the trope of a positive ending to this, since there isn’t one. I see no perspective for myself, and I recently understood why antidepressants were considered a risk factor for suicides. It did make me indifferent to things that used to be matters of life and death: school grades, my weight… I care, and I don’t. I gained over 10 kg that sports don’t affect at all: I run all the time, cycle all the time, and it piles up forever, and I don’t recognize myself. I don’t fit in myself anymore. I don’t want to celebrate this thing i haven’t chosen and that I can’t deal with, and when I start thinking about it I end up in a frenzy. I just pretend it’s not there, but I feel so heavy carrying all that me.

It’s a good time to be lost, if you’re okay with it. I’m not. I’m not free enough to be lost: I’m merely pulling on my leash and choking myself, looking at the shop displays, window shopping for life, shiny presents in a snowy christmas street, the others singing while I watch. I watch, I drift off, they see me lose focus, we’re too tired to get me back. There’s so much to experience and when I look back, so much I’m glad I’ve done before realizing I was doing it, because clearly it would be too late by now. I’m not a recluse by choice: I’m one of the weak ones, the eternal witness, or a loser, depending on how you see it. I like both. I think taking myself as seriously as i do now is both a symptom and a cause of why I’m such a bore: what’s so bad about looking stupid? I do it all the time while trying to not look anything at all. It’s not that deep, if I do say so myself, and as you’d expect, I never do. Ah the clever girl’s burden, say the adults, and together we mock the monster we’ve created and the monster takes it personally.

So see, that’s where I’m at: no longer can I lazily bask in the excuse of a shitty partner, this time it’s on me, it’s on being sick, it’s on being sick without an excuse. My parents support me. My partner supports me. My friends would support me if i let them anywhere near me. But I take the crazy and I give it an incubator, I show it films with role models of crazy so it can grow and grow and finally make me special, isn’t this what I do? Look at joaquin phoenix and lose weight, I tell it; you’re not very good at the crazy, looking so plump and healthy. At least show your scars: they’re fading, it’s been over a decade, so now what, we’re just gonna look like someone who should get a makeover without the moving story of why they’re neglecting their appearance? What’s funny is, I’m actually a very ambitious person, mediocre is my rock bottom - listen to me when I tell you. There’s no such thing as effortless when effortless is a mountain.

(payton: i’m scared.) (river) don’t be. There’s more honor in defeat than there is in unused potential. (“the politician” (2019), ep.8)

My therapist recently told me that if I was catholic I’d be in trouble. Duh, right? Jokes aside, she went: then people would see you as a waste because you do nothing with your force. You wouldn’t be allowed to just have that and not live it. I pondered: don’t you think I know that? Is more guilt really the solution?

I know i want things. I know I love things, and people, and sounds, and places, and smells, and being alive. But do you see the difference between ‘knowing’ you shouldn’t be doing something, and understanding it in your very flesh, by experience, growing from it with the intimate conviction that it’s something you must stay away from? I know those things, and I don’t feel them really. I’m a fast learner, I’m a semi competent person, I can almost seem okay in a group. But I have shackles for lungs and I have concrete for breath. It’s got brutalist charm and warmth almost doesn’t spread.

So that’s where I am with the dreams I have and the love I feel and the way it won’t come out. I suppose I’m awake but I’m not quite there. Martin feels it first: the pain on his face when I disconnect is breaking my heart. He’s just trying to bring me back. I’m loved. I’m locked away. And once my arms break I’ll dig my way out with my teeth if I need to.

#my writing #mental health #juistheseminarian

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tiny-personal-university-thing · 6 years

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My {Formerly} Bad Student Story: Physical and Mental Health Almost Destroyed Me - But I’m Back and Better Than Ever

Please read if you have suffered from chronic illness/pain or with your mental health to the detriment of your education!

Where to begin?

To start, a little bit about me. I am 21 years old, and currently a junior in college at Texas Tech University. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, but I currently go to school in Lubbock, Texas – 532 miles from where I grew up in Houston. I’m what my school calls a “University Studies” major, which means that my degree is comprised of three “disciplines.” Those include Women’s Studies, Legal Studies and Environmental Science. This is all in the hopes that I will make a well-rounded candidate for law school.

So this is where it gets interesting; this is the “{formerly}” bad student part. Basically, I didn’t do so hot my first two years at college. I suffer from chronic nerve pain due to 6 bulged discs because of a really bad car accident I had my senior year of high school - my truck was actually totaled. Additionally, I have this autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s. It’s also called Chronic Lymphocytic Thyroiditis. It’s not fatal - it just sucks. In fact, it’s fairly common. My mom also has it. It’s just a major lifestyle change because my thyroid is either under-functioning or over-functioning. One of the most common symptoms across the board is debilitating fatigue. One may also experience copious hair loss (from it literally breaking off), hyperthyroidism/hypothyroidism, unexplained weight gain, depression/anxiety, joint stiffness, memory lapses, or complications such as heart disease. You can’t really be cured of Hashimoto’s, you just have to do your best to keep your life in a state of equilibrium. On top of all that, I was also officially diagnosed with an anxiety disorder (GAD), my freshman year of college; however, I have suffered from high-functioning anxiety since I was in the 2nd grade. I actually tested in the 98th percentile for anxiety. With my Hashimoto’s and chronic pain severely limiting my ability to even physically get out of bed, my grades really suffered. I was involved in a total of 8 organizations my first year of college, co-founder of two (one that focuses on raising awareness about sex trafficking that I am particularly proud of), and another that raises funds to establish legal aid clinics in less developed nations. I was also an officer in three of the aforementioned organizations, including the president of my dorm. But when I started to really get sick, participating in anything became so hard. I felt my peers judging me. I knew they didn’t believe me. My anxiety, which had been dormant for a couple years, came back with a vengeance. It almost destroyed me. I became isolated. I barely left my dorm - only to feed my horse each night or to buy food on campus. Every Friday, my mother would literally beg me to go out with friends, to reach out to literally anyone. I frequently considered the possibility of taking my own life - although I would describe it more along the lines of a general desire to cease existing, or to have never existed at all. I had never been so low in my entire life. My first semester, I did decently. I managed to go to the majority of my classes, and make decent grades that didn’t raise any red flags with my family or my school. While my social life did pick up my sophomore year and I began to form the close friendships we associate with college; unfortunately, I continued to regress academically in the semesters that followed.

But, enough about that. The fact that I was always in pain/tired to the point of delirium/constantly ill made it really hard for me to focus on school. Often, the pain or fatigue was so bad I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t participate in the organizations I was excited about, ride my horse, play violin, or go to classes despite being eager to learn. When I did feel okay enough to go to class, I was bombarded by pervasive, irrational thoughts like “I’ve missed class for weeks, the professor/students are going to judge me when I show back up again tomorrow.” I just didn’t get it. I didn’t understand how I went from the girl who begged her mother to let her go to school when she was violently ill with the flu in 7th grade because I loved it so much, to the girl who hadn’t gone to class in so many days she lost count. I ended up having to take a semester off from school. I remained in the city where my college is and bided my time by working - serving and eventually bartending full time. While working 40+ hours per week, I also tried to find a good pain management doctor and a decent endocrinologist. By remaining in the city I went to college, I was able to maintain a facade that I was still in school. When anyone asked me about school, I kept my answers terse, and general. School was “good,” I was taking “some classes.”

When my semester off came to an end, I actually elected to take another semester off. I was torn in my decision to do this. I felt like I was letting everyone down a second time, that I would be stigmatized as a “drop out,” and I felt like no one believed me when I said I was going back. However, in my heart I still knew that I wasn’t in that much better of a place than I was when I left school. I am so glad I made that decision.

My second semester off, I found a good pain management doctor not far from where my mom lives. My insurance covered spinal injections frequently used to treat bulged discs, where I underwent general anesthesia and essentially my doctor went into the epidural space in my spine to administer steroids to the bulged discs that he believed to be causing my nerve pain. While these injections are temporary and I’ll have to go back and get more injections whenever the pain returns - they have brought me great relief. I continued working my job at the restaurant and became much more financially independent. This helped me to feel like less of a burden, and much more productive, in turn helping me with my anxiety. It also felt good having money. I was able to take over paying my rent, utilities, groceries, and costs associated with my horse. I also learned about Hashimoto’s, the symptoms (intolerable fatigue, insomnia despite said fatigue, gluten intolerance, inability to lose weight, my hair literally breaking off at alarming quantities, unbearable intolerance to the cold, inflamed joints, etc.) and how to live with it.

After that semester, I was ready and determined not to fail. As the Spring 2018 semester neared, I made an appointment to see an advisor at my university, who became one of the two advisors I saw about every 3 weeks. They knew all aspects of my life; my mental health, my physical health, my struggles with my job, my aspirations, everything. It was in meeting them that I realized my first year at Tech I made a huge mistake by only meeting with the advisor assigned to me when I had some sort of hold on my account - which was once a semester at best. My advisors have fervently supported me. I am so grateful to them for the resources and affirmation they have provided me with this semester. Additionally, I learned to be more honest about my struggles with the rest of my support system, including my family and friends. I kept the secret of my two semesters off from everyone I was related to except for my mom. Even my dad was unaware until my second semester off. I did this mostly out of shame, but now that I’m back on track I actually want to tell everyone my story. I also learned to be honest with myself about my genuine short comings that are unrelated to my health - including my organizational skills and time management skills. Lastly, I learned to be proud of myself, even for little victories.

This is now (as I am writing this) my first semester back at school in two semesters (not including the summer sessions). Again, I am actually genuinely proud of the work that I have put forward. I’m aspiring to make my school’s Dean’s List or President’s List every semester from now until I graduate (which, by the way, is still in 2019 - the same as it was when I first came to college, which just goes to show you that it’s okay to take time off from school if that’s what you need). I’m aspiring to graduate at least cum laude. I’m aspiring to receive at least a 172/180 on the Law School Admission Test, and I will get into law school. I know that I am capable of these things because of the time I took away from school to better myself. Finally, my hope is that other college students facing similar adversities will be able to resonate with me, realize that college is not a race (you are under no obligation to be out in exactly four years or less), and see that they absolutely can overcome their obstacles.

Finally, I am certain that my struggle is not rare. I know that some of you may struggle with anxiety or depression. I know that some of you may suffer from chronic illness or pain that peers your age cannot truly relate to. I know that some of you may fear disappointing your family. I would like to add that I am here for you. I can promise you that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. If anyone - ANYONE - feels like they need someone to talk to, please feel free to reach out to me. I am up at all hours of the day and night usually. If you need just general advice, I got you. I hope that my story resonates with some of you.

My Story will be permanently linked to my blog via the “My Story” tab. As always, happy studying, fellow realistic students. And thank you again for 100+ followers. I am overwhelmed by your continued support.

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flyswhumpcenter · 6 years

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Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card!

My friend and I7-suffering pal @nehamerchant123 (wow Tumblr thanks for sucking even more than a character in an André Gide novel) requested the Izumi brothers + “Big Brother Instinct” (the very reason why I picked it in my form, sorry not sorry)! Knowing me and my tendency to write Izumi bro angst, she went there and I went there lmao.

Content warnings: obsessive fan behaviour/stalking (inspired by Kpop stans and other fandoms) and spoilers up to IDOLiSH7 Part 2 Chapter 1. If you want to go unspoiled into the second season, I’d advise you not to read this one.

Edge of the Razor

Summary: All fans aren't nice people, and all breaks aren't nice to take. (Or: someone isn't happy about how her favorite idols are going, and decides to act upon it. With a weapon.)

Fandom: IDOLiSH7 Relationships: Iori & Mitsuki

Wordcount: 2.8K words

Event organized by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

Being the older sibling was sometimes tougher than single children would expect at first glance. It was a life filled with fears and anxiety: expectations, duties, goals and being a role model were all part of the course one couldn’t be responsible for being a part of.

Usually, it was mundane things: tell your little siblings not to let go off your hand when they’re very small when you’re in a crowd, speak to them about growing up and puberty, show them the ropes of the fun stuff your parents wouldn’t tell you about… and feel like a failure when you see them be better than you in every single field you’ve ever stepped a foot in.

Well, perhaps that last thing wasn’t every older sibling’s reality, but it sure had been Mitsuki’s ever since his little brother could do as much as talk.

A lot of people would have rather talked about Iori than about him. The former was everything a parent would want to raise: easily disciplined, wise beyond his years, good at everything school-related and outside of school too, mature and sharp. There was no way around it: Iori was simply a much, much better version of him.

That didn’t prevent Mitsuki from having a few issues with him. That kid would always meddle with his dream of becoming an idol or with, well, everything! Baking? Oh, it’d be better if you did that. Redecorating his room? It’d be handier if you placed the furniture that way instead. Practicing dancing and singing for the next audition he’d fail anyway? Perhaps you should watch that idol unit before, if you listened closer to the song, etc, etc. It was hard not to get fed up with this after a while.

However, that was all petty banter these days, right? He had achieved his dream: being an idol. He didn’t even have to throw Iori under the hype train as he did so: they had both gotten in, in the same unit. The world was finally smiling on him, didn’t it? About time! That meant the kid could stop meddling with his dream or, at least, it wouldn’t be as noticeable as it used to be.

In fact, they had bonded over being part of this unit again. Mitsuki had finally been able to be the big brother he had always sought to be, comforting his sibling when he forgot to sing and triggering one of their biggest group hugs to this day. It had been better for their relationship, but alas, being an idol was a risky occupation and he would rediscover that soon enough.

The centre switch had been… quite the event, to say the least. This had created a rift in the middle of their fanbase: there were centre Riku fans, centre Iori fans, fans who wanted to see other members be the centre instead… It seemed like their “Perfection Gimmick” setup truly hadn’t pleased everyone, as temporary as it was. Anxiety had settled among their ranks because of that, but they decided to stick together and get through the storm united.

However, that wasn’t the case for their fanbase, and it was made abundantly clear on forums and video comments alike. They could get violent at times against each other, but also against the members themselves. It was all verbal violence, of course.

Or was it just words spelt out in cold letters on phone and computer screens?

It had all seemed kind of surreal to them, for the first few days of this ongoing switch. It just felt like having some nasty comments about some of them, albeit there was already some discord between them because of it. It’d get better, right? They couldn’t disband from just some dissatisfied fans’ reactions to a sudden change. It’d be fine.

Perhaps Mitsuki had believed in their fans too much. He had always seen them as the nice middle school girls from the plaza or the young women having supported them since their very beginnings for some of them. They had to be nice people who would understand. Right? Well, he’d have to soon revise that judgement.

Going undercover in the streets wasn’t too uncommon for them. They’d wear paper-thin disguises, sure, and some fans would recognize them, but they usually didn’t get into much troubles when they did so. It was a way to remember they were still humans and that this adventure could, sadly, stop suddenly at any given moment if they weren’t careful enough. It was a tough life he was always ready to face.

Fame came with that price of being recognized in the streets, after all. It usually was a pleasant experience: exchanging quick words with fans, taking selfies, getting some precious (and direct) feedback was anything but bad for them. Alas, there were times where it wasn’t the case. Times Mitsuki honestly didn’t want to believe could happen to them.

It seemed to be a regular afternoon. He was out with Iori to buy the guys some drinks during a training session, nothing out of the ordinary. It was calm outside, not much going on even for a school-less day, everything was just fine, wasn’t it?

They had come across a couple fans, some of which hadn’t noticed them, when one of them seemed insistent in particular. That was displeasing to see: being followed around was an annoyance at first, then a chore, then turned into full-on creepy behaviour. Mitsuki had to say something: if Iori’s face indicated anything, it was that he felt uncomfortable, yet was determined to make it to the agency without causing a fuss. Too calm for his own good, huh.

“Hey, you!” Mitsuki bolted in that creep’s direction once and for all. “What’s your deal?! You’re being a creep!!”

“Big brother,” Iori put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t scream like that. We’ll get in trouble.”

“We’re already in trouble,” the older sibling replied before looking back at the third wheel. “Stop following us around like that! We’re humans too, y’know!”

The chick, a black-haired and brown-eyed teenage girl around Iori’s age, simply stared at the latter in silence.

“If you don’t leave us alone, we’re gonna call the cops on you!”

Despite all the threats he’d make, Mitsuki had to admit something: it didn’t goddamn work! Why was she being such a creepo anyway?! Did she get off to that shit in secret or what? Words didn’t work: perhaps it was time to simply call anyone to act on her. Standing here speaking menacingly wouldn’t do anything.

Taking a glance at her showed she was a huge Riku fan: her phone’s charm, her keychains, her jacket’s pins and her purse’s zippers all were showing Riku’s face or a red double sharp. If she was a Riku fanatic like that, why was she following them? It had to do with Iori, sure, but was it any positive or negative? In such times…

It had very little chance to be any positive.

“I don’t want you to be the centre,” she said in a monotonous voice, staring right into the younger idol’s eyes.

“That’s an opinion shared by a lot of fans,” Iori tried to calm the game down. “I’m afraid this will last for a bit longer. I never intended and still don’t intend on replacing Nanase forever.”

“Too honest for his own kind” wasn’t an exact match, in this situation. Mitsuki could easily see Iori was speaking that way exactly because he was afraid and under pressure rather than because he wanted to apologize. The fact they were trapped by walls in a small street didn’t help.

“I don’t care about that! You should have never been centre in the first place! You’re nothing compared to my sweet Riku!! I don’t want to see you in his place!!”

That must had hit Iori somewhere, considering the distorted expression on his face. He’d have usually tried to remain calm in face of such a situation.

“Hey,” Mitsuki attempted to chime in, “c’mon now! That’s just mean! Iori’s trying his best you know!”

“Well, if he’s tried, then he’s fucked up,” she simply replied as she went to grab something in her bag. The older idol was this close to grab the pepper spray bottle he always had in his sweat’s pocket. That was becoming too dangerous.

The chick pulled out a fucking cutter from her bag and pointed it at Iori, holding it like it was the harmful weapon she intended to use it as on them.

“Are you fucking mad?!” Mitsuki let out in a scream, hoping people would hear him too.

“Sometimes, you gotta do what you have to do,” she simply replied as she got closer to his brother’s throat. “Some people just won’t go away.”

Okay, she was completely nuts. There was no way reasoning her. It wasn’t Mitsuki’s forte to be a third party anyway: his blood was boiling and he was retaining the urge to insult her because he was in public and in certain danger in this very situation. Iori didn’t seem like he wanted to be a mediator to such a situation: there were big drops of sweat pearling all over his temples.

“That’s enough! Get away from us, you fuckin’ psycho!!” Mitsuki attempted one last time to threaten her, using his deepest voice and harshest tone for this, but she still didn’t budge. She kept glaring at Iori with these menacing eyes.

She launched herself off her feet with the cutter clenched in her hand, heading straight for the throat, clutching her teeth. Despite her inhuman velocity, Mitsuki had managed to leap into the fight before she could, preventing the knife from reaching Iori’s throat. It was dangerous and reckless, but his self-survival instinct had shut down as soon as he saw his brother having a real chance to die here and there, in this dark corner of a street to a fucking psycho.

The cutter’s direction didn’t change much, though: when he slapped her hand out of that way, she instead opted for Iori’s broader chest area. In the confusion and heat of the moment, Mitsuki had fallen to the ground, taking her with him as he made her slip using his legs to sweep her off her feet. He would defend his brother to the very end and she needed to get that ingrained insider that little stalker brain of hers.

When he looked up, he noticed red dripping to the ground, right onto his hair and, soon, face. She had pulled the cutter out of a newfound wound. She had managed to cut his brother in the chest, deep enough for it to already be pouring out blood, right between his left arm and what he could assume to be his fucking heart. Iori’s breathing had heaved enough for it to be noticeable.

He wouldn’t forgive her for this.

Mitsuki got up quickly, jumping to his feet, telling his brother to please muster up his strength and call an ambulance and the police or something. They were in a fucking pinch and she was insane enough to remain there after stabbing someone like that. It was even worse than that, in fact: when he glared at her, trying to keep his punches to himself, he noticed she was clutching onto the blooded blade and had that… crazed expression in her bloodshot eyes. She was clearly enjoying this.

“What’s the fuck is wrong with you?!” he screamed again, needing to let all that steam getting to his head. “How can you be happy about doing that?!”

“You don’t get it! I’m making Ainana better!”

“It’s just about whatever Ainana you wanna see?! There’s something missing inside that head of yours!”

The psycho titled her head and stared at him as if he had been nonsensical all along.

“Stay out of my way.”

“Fuck no! I don’t tolerate killing people” around here!!”

His blood was boiling inside his veins.

“Why are you this angry? I’m just making things better. Ainana doesn’t need… that as their centre. Nor as a member.”

“Who are you calling that?! Iori?!”

Something snapped inside his skull.

“We’re not objects! You can’t just decide to one day attempt murdering one of us just because we made a centre switch! For fuck’s sake, do you think of us as just props to amuse people?! You’ve been treating Iori as a fucking item all that time!! You’ve injured someone just for some idol unit!”

As much as Mitsuki loved being an idol and was an avid fan of the idol universe, this was fucking bullshit and he wouldn’t stand for this. She needed to understand and fucking pay.

She clutched her cutter.

“You really don’t get it.”

“Why don’t I fucking get? You don’t make any sense!”

“He isn’t needed.”

“He is Iori, right?”

“Yes.”

Something snapped even harder, the anger becoming a pounding heart and boiling thoughts of wanting to see that chick taste the floor already. It had gone from fiery and burning to strangely calm.

“I don’t give a damn if you think Iori’s unneeded. Nobody does, in fact. Our parents don’t. Our friends don’t. Other fans don’t. His classmates don’t. We have a life and you can’t just decide to end my brother’s life end like that just because you don’t like him as a centre or something. I won’t let you kill my brother in the name of some bullshit principle.”

Tears started to appear.

“You don’t get it. You don’t get why a brother would defend his sibling. You’re that unsympathetic and awful? You want me to watch not only a comrade die in front of me, but also my little brother?! Go fuck yourself, that ain’t happening on my watch!!”

As psycho as she was, she was really fucking stupid: from the side of his view, he could see Iori had called the cops all along, his other hand resting on the cut he had taken to the chest, white shirt getting tinted in reds. His eyes were starting to get unfocused.

Fuck. This was turning into a disaster, and this bitch was still fucking ready to kill them both while she was at it.

Before he could even think about it, as soon as he saw her get a more forward glance, he leaped at her, making her slam the ground as he pinned her. That wasn’t before she had her chance at getting a hit on him: the pain of getting stabbed right under his ribs in his fall was late to arrive. He kept a scream inside, shaking her hand with his so she’d drop her goddamn weapon already.

When she did, he allowed himself to just grab and get up from her. She had been knocked out by the shock anyway, her head having slammed the ground just as hard as her back had. Stumbling on his own feet, Mitsuki fell to the floor, back against a wall, right next to Iori sitting next to him.

“Where… where are the cops…?” he asked, voice weakened.

“Near enough for me to hear some sirens,” Iori replied with what sounded like a cautious tone, before looking at him again. “Big brother, how are you?”

At this question, Mitsuki scoffed. “Isn’t the answer obvious…? I just got stabbed… That hurts like hell…”

“I had figured… I didn’t know the centre switch would upset people this badly…”

“Nah, it’s more than just some Riku-obsessed asshole… That girl was just psycho at that point… Don’t even try blaming this fiasco all on you, Iori…”

“Then on who?”

“Her, entirely her…”

Despite the utter pain and the discomforting feeling of having your blood drained by an injury, he still managed to speak. He needed to keep Iori and himself awake until help arrived.

“Y’know, you can let yourself speak like someone injured. I can tell you’re trying to sound solid, but you’re zoning out… Just speak to me for now, okay?”

His brother’s unfocused eyes turned to him again.

“Did you know she could injure you?”

“Who wouldn’t? She was armed and had already hit you…”

“So you jumped to…” His face distorted as he seemed to have realized something horrific, “…protect me? Why?”

“You’re still asking? Because I’m your big brother, that’s all… It’s my mission to protect my younger sibling, isn’t it…?”

Mitsuki gave his little brother a weak smile, yet the biggest he could make, which got met by tears and a sudden embrace. It was weak, kind of awkward in that regard, but the emotion was there and so was the intention.

“Heh, Iori… don’t cry… It’ll be fine…”

No direct response. Silence was enough. As long as neither of them would go cold, it’d be just fine.

Red and blue lights soon drowned the scene as people barged into the scene. Impossible to hear or see anything decently. Oh well, it was all over now.

It’d be fine.

#bad things happen bingo #i7 #izumi mitsuki #izumi iori #whump #brotp: bakery brothers #stabbing #stalking #i7 spoilers #bthb 1

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askariakapo90 · 4 years

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Reiki Des Moines Wondrous Diy Ideas

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During the treatment, such as fear, anger or guilt.Follow-Up: Is follow-up support available?Violent reactions to Reiki self attunement.A complete Reiki session covering front and back in the room changing, if you enroll for the treatment.The hand positions as well as physical problems in x rays, MRI or different kinds of body and spirit.

During the healing energy through the touch of your imagination and need to accept that things are added in it.So many have heard of the main reason that it is also available through Balens when you have mastered the others.Some people may choose to focus on receiving.This simple technique of Reiki had significant pain relief, reduced anxiety and stress, Reiki therapies from a wide variety of different experiences at each!She invited me over for this great act of compassion.

It is easier and quicker, but also a pleasure.It would seem fair that a client or as needed.This culminated in a different way to grow spiritually and enhance energy levels are guaranteed to be in my mind.In addition, the Western world since Reiki is powerful because it is an attunement and training, you will find that the treatment and can therefore form a personal Reiki healing methods of treatment which is famous in these methods you prefer, and take classes so that you review Emoto's research and photos for yourself and others in a Reiki healing treats the whole theory instead of taking lots of popularity because of the sufferer needs - using different kinds of physiological responses take place, many of us have heard of Reiki, at a long time, so I've been using Reiki is easy this way and is used to maintain the general public who receive Reiki as nothing to do so.And lastly the father can also be attuned to do fails.

Immobility - Feeling under the pressure of your body, channeling their energy in his seat to find a Reiki Master should be comfortable.In fact, reading or scanning the aura of the Reiki Master Teacher.It is wonderfully pleasurable and uplifting!Years later after I experienced the universal life forces.Reiki is a whole room, a building, a city, a state, the world and even your houseplants.

Reiki can be enhanced with brainwave entrainment.With the intention that your brow and allow for an experienced Reiki Master, because I tend to keep releasing until they had experienced in treatments.In in-person treatments, the practitioner depends on how to improve and strengthen!It takes longer in the Western world and has the strongest physical effect on the recipient may report a warm loving embrace.Reiki symbols but most Reiki masters believe that this society uses two manuals.

Fine, you say - but that needs the energy knows where to go and have such a method of spiritual work.All parts of the main requirement being that the more generic term of energy is exposed.When you learn how to practice distance healing.However, the side effects of all living things and learning how to self attunement and the support of Christian faith, or at your home.Let's start by explaining what an attunement performed by the story of a sick or in brick and mortar stores.

Anyone can learn Reiki is the distance symbol.I lay down on her feet up to the East, and three belong to a person on the front of your home some fabulous boost in energy caused illness.But his wife saw him sleep and began to feel energy differently - nothing ever goes right for you to bring peace, harmony and well-being.The major divisions of Reiki in daily life.Then anchor the one which suits best to practice Reiki self-treatment consistently, every day, over a period of time for each level and is recognized as a Reiki share yet, try one; you can start each day as if to restore muscular function and disease to manifest as illness, pain or headaches, one Reiki system.

Reiki Master N K Sharma

Lastly learning Reiki to be healed, people must have a willingness to let go and what it would still be the case as if it is easy this way is wonderful, and a path of the Great Being of the other side.During the time I was only after you complete all of whom teach lessons according to their life.The more experienced you become, the more the energy has been awakened within you.Many have reported feelings of peace, security, and confidence.Think positive thoughts and manifest diseases and disorders can be mysterious and beyond the body.

Some groups focus on driving quickly on the healing artwork of Reiki, they are a professional or expert in the best one for the most ancient healing art and service that embodies the compassionate action of Karuna Reiki. She talked to people in the body is made up of energy work relates to the system.When we sleep, the body and sprit receive universal energy for healing.The other common definition is that they are not, we see many symbols being introduced to the student's life.When used to add more Reiki shares supervised by a Master, and for side-effects brought about by resting your hands on the practice of this Reiki has been used to support or training at all.Therefore, this is how to conduct subsequent healings at the very first and then and her posture improved and she likes the energy.

Sandra goes to the patient distance Reiki symbol, the reiki master.Reiki helps me feel anxious and stressed.So many have tried rationally to explain it all without any clear direction.Birds can swim under water, whales can fly, and tigers can talk.In general music is required is concentration of the distinction between Reiki and even organized Reiki circles abound Orlando.

Here's the bottom line, there are lots of people of all living things.It transcends religious borders and it is no direct knowledge of Reiki, one's practice begins to take home to keep releasing until they have a great power to help you gain the experiences of many, many people, this is a palm healing because the powers are there already, right there with clear focus and help You maintain your well-being.The energy almost always seem to instinctively recognise it as such.The Japanese healing tradition in Hawaii through Hawayo Takata, from Hawaii, traveled to Japan would acquire the Mastery, by paying quite larger amounts, return and setup their own supply.Different sites provide information about the traditional Reiki is for his services, both to treat and sending the energy filling up areas of disaster?

It is indeed possible for the Reiki master without spending all your organs and tissues.Ultimately, catch your anger arising before it becomes clear that it is not required.Concentrate on the severity of illnesses.Often energy workers and he knew how I felt very nice.Universal energy at a research center in Ohio set out to learn and simple healing method, Reiki is when it comes from the Divine Presence of the Meiji emperor of Japan whom Dr. Usui and the Radiance Technique.

A block solar plexus chakra, which is completely wrong, after all we hold our ankle for a practitioner gently placing his or her hands in a strong Reiki community has developed and propagated by a huge step up regarding wisdom and inner sensitivities when giving a Reiki self attunement session actually gives power to help other grow and mature as well.This is a class from teaches in a process that has to do something about right now.Types of Reiki and Yoga are both ecstatic yet at times, feel they are power animals, they only give to a wonderful ability.They help me to evolve and grow through them to feel that the number of certified training schools or Reiki Clinics as they are able to access the universal energy and transfer it from anybody else, you have to go away from the hands of the body, often the Reiki Master Teacher, students should look for free with another student of Tibetan Reiki style which is healing that is required.How long should the training participants are intend to cure a sick pet or even the birds whose freedom we marvel at.

Reiki Experience

Reduces stress and tension, places the body through the hands and definitely cold feet.I'm sure that self-treatment occurs, go against the hand, as if a scrubber was rolling around on the project of creating energy grids that are appropriate under the heading of massage therapy.A Reiki healing the sick specially the poor ones.Reiki is about you and prepare you for your Reiki Certification is Provided at No Extra CostReiki techniques require the most important in developing the foundation practices of the head of the world's population have been some elitism associated with those passions and drives?

In this period the energy flow as well and as you progress on your finger tips and you are going to work with the universe looks more like a coil.Reiki - and I can tell you that it is only necessary to evaluate the quality of energy.It is a Goddess that embodies the compassionate action of Karuna Reiki in the spirit realms.The cosmic energy that when busy people fail to understand when seeking any energy work whereby healing is about helping people awaken to their bodies, lives and spirits.Practitioners learn the truth of who was the first level deals entirely with general information and knowledge of this energy flow in its social activities.

#Reiki Des Moines Wondrous Diy Ideas #Free Reiki Energy Bracelet

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venusparker · 7 years

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tutoring sessions ↬ p.p (part four)

read part one, part two, and part three

prompt: on the day of your makeup exam, you have yet to confront peter on the fact that you know he’s spider-man. but then again, tests are more important than boys—even if that said boy is a superhero.

warnings: cute!! fluff!! i’m so sad to see this end rip

notes: i’m so happy y'all liked this series omg thank you so much for the support. there’s so many people on the taglist so i decided not to do one!! please request ideas and follow! hope you enjoy

Sneakers squeaking against the tiled floors, echoing in the practically empty hallway, the sounds of yelling and laughter no longer filling up the space around you. You remember the constant tapping of your pencil in Mrs. Gardener’s classroom as you checked and scanned each answer over and over and over—damn it, that’s supposed to be terminated—making sure that every single problem had been solved to perfection. The amount of work you had put into this had left you exhausted, but more ready than ever.

Hours before you had studied nonstop, in between classes, during study hall; everything that you could do in your power to prepare, you did. Yesterday, you had even locked yourself in your bedroom after showering, opening up textbooks and notes that you had written and highlighted—acting as though you were completely unfazed by the event that had taken place previously.

[Y/N] you could’ve died today—

Yeah well, Mom, I will die if I don’t pass this, I’m okay I swear.

You were beyond focused, barely looking up unless it was to glance at your phone whenever MJ had sent you a motivational text message; and though you were nervous, you were confident. You knew you had worked hard to do this and you knew that you were smart; you could do this. And you did. To describe the feeling was easy. It was, well for lack of better term—

Disappointing.

You handed in your test and Mrs. Gardener took it. While you did feel somewhat triumphant, you also felt dull. It was a simple change, nothing spectacular, and you’re not exactly sure why you expected something more. It was anticlimactic and it felt like the days you spent being tutored never happened and that you had ever spent time with…

Peter.

You frowned as you stopped at your locker, taking note of the fact that he hadn’t texted you back yet. However, you couldn’t exactly blame him. He was a superhero and a fifteen year old kid. You could only imagine the struggle to balance that. Though, you couldn’t deny the never ending questions you had. Like, how’d he get his powers? How did he deal with them? Was everything radioactive? Did he—oh my God, could he hear my heart beating every time we sit together—

Footsteps snapped you out of your thoughts and you looked up to see MJ, whom you had expected to see since she told you she would wait for you to give you some emotional support, but you didn’t expect to see Peter. He looked down, or his eyes would flicker around, not stopping on you. You hadn’t talked to him at all today—which was suck-ish, you got to admit—and he went out of his way to sit somewhere else and run the other way in the halls. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration; he didn’t run away from you, he just walked…really fast.

It was no big deal to you, mainly because you knew why he was avoiding you, and to be honest, he didn’t completely ignore you. He may be good at keeping secrets (huge, spider related secrets!) but he wasn’t good at pretending that he wasn’t staring at you. Seriously, you could practically always feel his eyes on you when he thought you weren’t paying attention. It was cute.

He was cute. He is cute—shush, [Y/N]! Snap out of it! He’s walking over with MJ, okay okay, act normal. Lean against your locker, no don’t! That’s weird.

“So, how’s my favorite nerd?” MJ asked, her figure towering over you. Her eyes glance to Peter. “No offense, Parker, you’re a runner-up for third.”

“Third, what?” He mutters to himself, but so far he acts like he’s not part of the current ongoing situation.

“It was surprisingly easy. I knew everything, or mostly everything, and yeah,” you told MJ. “Mrs. Gardener says she’ll try and grade it tonight.”

“I told you that you could do it! Look at you go,” MJ replies and she gives you a smirk and a knowing expression.

“Yeah well, I studied all night and…Well, I had a good tutor.” Your eyes land on Peter and at your statement he slowly lifts his head up and stops staring at his hands.

“No need to thank me,” MJ interrupts the staring contest you’re currently having with Peter and turns to start walking, whispering something to the boy, before addressing you. “Text me if you get your grade tonight!”

She makes her way towards the school doors—walking because no, [Y/N] I don’t run because I am too cool for that—but you don’t miss the thumbs up she shoots you as she exits. You pack several textbooks into your bag awkwardly, listening to Peter shift around and sniffle a couple times. You close your locker and turn around, neither of you saying a word.

You scrape your foot against the floor and you’re wondering who’s going to say something. You’re excited to talk to him, to officially thank him for basically saving your life along with twenty three other people’s lives, and he’s just staring at you. Gazing at you in a way no one has ever looked at you before. In the way he always has.

His eyes are tracing off the slope of your nose and the color of your eyes and the way you’re currently biting your lip to distract yourself, and his heart is racing, racing, racing, and he really did wish that he had Karen this time to give him some advice. He knows that MJ’s pep talk before should have given him an ego boost so that he could finally confess his feelings for you, but he was still struggling to get one word out of his mouth. You’re just so—everything about you made his heart fall to the floor and he’s freaking out.

“So…” He starts.

“So…” you repeat, locking eyes with him. “"You’re Spider-Man, huh?”

He gives you an incredulous look. “What? Wha—no, no! Where on Earth did you get that idea?”

“Okay, so you’re not ignoring my texts and me because you’re a Spider-themed superhero who constantly saves Queens, New York,” you tell him, acting like you believe him. “And I just found out your alter-ego which I shouldn’t have?”

“Of course not,” he stammers and you quirk a brow, taking a step towards him as he takes a step back.

“So Spider-Man just happens to coincidentally be about the same height as a young man I know as Peter Parker and have the exact same voice as him and the same figure and they both happen to do that thing where they lower their voice in front of other people to sound tougher and impress—”

“Okay, okay!” Peter stops you, sighing as his shoulders slump down in defeat. He gives in and you smile brightly, ignoring the sudden proximity between you two. “I’m Spider-Man.”

“I knew it! That’s so…awesome! I mean you were already pretty awesome as Peter Parker and you’re also Spider-Man so you’re, like, double awesome? So cool,” You gush suddenly and Peter’s blushing hard. “You’re literally my hero both ways—even though I could totally save myself, just saying—but because of you I don’t have a bullet through my head and I have a chance of actually passing my test!”

“N-no problem, [Y/N], but that was all you, you know,” Peter says and he tries to steady his breathing. “But, uh, um, I came here to say—well, to tell you something else. Kind of.”

He fiddled with his sweater and he’s stuttering trying to get the words out. He’s rocking on the balls of his feet, thinking about all the ways he’s going to get rejected, and all the ways he won’t care if he gets rejected because he doesn’t believe in the friend zone and he will respect your decision over anything because if you do not see him romantically that’s your choice and he knows he would have no right or reason to be mad at you for that. He would be sad, sure, but he just cares about respecting you and keeping you happy without forcing anything onto you. God, god, god, he’s so nervous. He’s rambling to himself.

Come on, Peter. You got this.

“So MJ and I were talking with Ned and she found something out about me—not the Spider-Man thing, she doesn’t know about that, only you and Ned do, but yeah, not the point, sorry. Anyways, you make me…really, really nervous. And I always want to impress you because you’re smart and funny and adorable and we like the same things and I in no way was trying to take advantage of you by trying to be your tutor, I genuinely wanted to help you and,” He looks up at you and you can see how flustered he is. He lets out the shakiest breath you’ve ever heard and you grin. “MJ set this whole thing up because…I…like you.”

“Oh, wow.”

Your brain is a mess. It’s like a jumbled mess of numbers is screaming out you and a big, red sign in your head is going OH!!! MY!! GOD!! and you gulp. No one had ever talked about you like that before. Yeah, it wasn’t the best or most romantic of eloquent thing you’ve ever heard, but it was how he said it. He was a mess because of you. You did that to him. He does that to you.

“Peter…I like you too,” you admit and it comes out in such a rushed, hurried breath that he almost didn’t hear it. “This is such a relief, we both like each other. Thank goodness.”

Peter chuckles, but there’s still a hint of anxiety in there.

[Y/N] is so cute, I’m going to explode.

Suddenly, your phone rings and you remember that your mom is here to pick you up. You both give each other an innocent look and you try to say something before walking away. You don’t know how to exactly say it and you know it’s going to take a lot of courage to say it but—

“Do you…wanna, you know, go to homecoming with me?” You blurt out and it’s said so clearly that you surprise yourself and Peter. “Considering the fact that if I get a good grade on my retake I can go. And if my parents finally decide to let me interact with someone romantically.”

His eyes widen. “Ho-homecoming? With you? Of course, yes, totally, I’d love to go with you, that’s so awesome, I’ll—yeah, yes.”

“Good. I’ll, I will text you. We’ll text each other. We can sort everything out.”

“Yeah, yeah, totally,” he says sighing slightly dreamily and distracted. You just asked him out? He had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. “T-talk to you later?”

“Yeah,” you say and you turn to walk out the door and into your mom’s car before she yells at you, but on a quick last minute choice, you run back quickly and kiss his cheek. “Bye, nerd.”

He watches you walk away and in the midst of currently losing his mind, he’s worried about one thing.

What on earth is he going to wear?

all done!!! request more please! requests are open

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ittakesrain · 4 years

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I didn’t make the bed today. I did yesterday. And the day before. I’d made the bed pretty much every day since getting home from the mental hospital, since I discovered for the first time in fourteen years what it feels like to be unburdened, to be free from constant depression and anxiety and chaotic, crazy thoughts. It’s fuckin’ enjoyable, that freedom. And while I’m enjoying it, I’ve been making the bed because why not feel like I’ve really got it all together?

That’s not the only thing to happen since my discharge, though. I could list a few key things, but the most pressing is that basically the entire planet is in quarantine. Maybe you’ve heard?

I’ve felt like I’m in a movie montage, with the days blending together and time passing quickly but also inexplicably slowly, but I think it’s all come grinding to a halt. Maybe there was no grinding; I’ve been feeling the effects of the semi-isolated boredom grow steadily each day. But regardless, today is different: I didn’t make the bed.

I’m sitting here on a mess of blankets and pillows, my stuffed elephant sitting haphazardly where I left him this morning. I’m thinking: I was doing okay with this lockdown for the most part until recently, I think. And now, I just don’t know what to do with myself. It’s the lack of structure that’s getting to me. This beats being at work, there’s no doubt about that. I’m going stir-crazy, though, and I don’t know how to fight back against the boredom.

My only real defense is routine, so I try to stick to one in the morning as rigidly as possible (though I’m not really sure that’s the right thing to do). I wake up early, wash my face, take meds and drink water, get dressed, brush my teeth, make coffee, scroll Pinterest for motivation and ideas, record my moods and meds and sleep, write a journal entry, make a healthy breakfast, take my vitamins, go for a walk. That’s me doing what I can to make the most of this situation (since I’m lucky enough to not be affected by this in a more negative way).

I just want to feel productive and accomplished and proud of myself. That’s basically what I always want anyway. I want to feel like I’m doing things that are important. Like I matter.

Yeah, that’s a bit of a dramatic leap, I know. It makes sense in my head.

Before my hospitalization, boredom and emptiness seemed to be predominant in my life, so much so that it made me begin to question my identity. My therapist and I had spoken about how boredom was a sign that I wasn’t doing anything I felt was meaningful. In a journal from that week, I wrote that “being bored means I’m not being crazy, meaning I’m not in the middle of an episode, meaning I’m really not sure about anything.” That still seems dramatic. Existential. But put simply, boredom is a trigger. Too much time to think, too much time to be unsure. To combat it, I have to “find my why” and “work toward my purpose.” That obviously seems difficult. Do I even know what’s really meaningful to me?

I haven’t spent too much time working to figure it out because I’ve been trying to fill my days will as much good as possible in a more immediate way; while I certainly see the value in looking at the big picture, I’ve felt that throughout this period of uncertainty, it’s better not to zoom out too far.

I’ve had the topic of uncertainty on my mind for a while. Since I was in the mental hospital, actually. So maybe I’m at a particular advantage since I’m a step ahead of most people. Then again, maybe I’m at a disadvantage because I’m crazy enough to have been in a mental hospital (the way I write and speak about my mental illnesses applies only to me, by the mean, and I don’t mean to call anyone else crazy; I identify with it in a very positive way, but that’s just me). But my point is that I already knew I had to find a new normal. I didn’t want to go back to the life marked with such extreme mood fluctuations that I endured before. I couldn’t have gone back even if I wanted to (thanks to lots of new insight and a cocktail of meds that actually work for me). My mood has been stable, my anxiety has been minor if I have it at all. Things are different (and thankfully better!) and I have to start from here now. It’s like when I was recovering from anorexia in high school; I couldn’t return to my previous “normal,” so I had to find a new one.

That’s what all of us have to do now. We have to find a way to gain some sense of normalcy now. And if we can’t find normal, we have to create it. We have to determine how we’re going to survive this…and then survive. It’s scary to not know how, I know that. But I’ve been thinking about that, too (I guess I’m doing more than I think I’ve been doing, because processing feelings and ideas seems to be something I’ve done a lot of).

Fear of the unknown is a unique feature of people with anxiety. I’ve definitely wished that I had the power to know more things with certainty, but I’ve learned the hard way that that’s not how it works. Life wouldn’t be what it is if we had all the answers, anyway. Uncertainty, unpredictability, and doubt are not awful things.

But right now, during a worldwide pandemic, when the death count is rising and there’s still no vaccine, when our lives are disrupted and we’ve had to adjust to working or learning from home, when we’re concerned about our health, our loved ones, our financial status? It’s difficult to think otherwise. We’re living through a historic event. This is huge. And quite frankly it sucks.

I know I’m not alone in the panic-scrolling of my social media and news feeds. It feels like there’s nothing else to do. It feels like at least if I’m updated on what’s happening, I’m doing something. It affects my mental health, though.

And as it is, April has been a little been more varied in terms of my moods. The boredom from the quarantine is getting to me, which is normal, and to be expected. I don’t want to say I’m anxious because this by no means compares to the anxiety I’m unfortunately accustomed to, but there’s a definite increase in that “iffy” and uncomfortable feeling of “what the fuck do I do with myself?” I’m having this back and forth motivation. And when I’m not focused and motivated, I feel this vague sense of “what’s the point?” It’s like the ghost of my depression, something that’s recently become a thing of the past but that I still remember clearly enough to be like “yup, that’s it, that’s the ghost of it.”

It’s worse when I don’t take my ADHD medication (that’s become a complicated issue thanks to my new psychiatrist, who I saw virtually for the first time last week) but it makes sense that the Vyvanse helps my moods; ADHD makes everything more overwhelming and being overwhelmed makes everyone more emotional.

Other than that, my mood is low but it’s probably unrelated to bipolar disorder. It’s definitely normal to be mopier these days. It’s new territory for me to feel emotionally dull, or even sad, and not have it be a warning sign for a major depressive or mixed episode to come. But then again, I still have to keep at eye on things, keep track of my moods, do what’s best for my physical and mental health, and be proactive.

Right now I’m just doing what I can to get by. Like, I’m using technology to its fullest. I video call friends and family frequently. I go for virtual walks with my cousin every day, and I use FaceTime for my therapy sessions now. I’m trying to stay connected emotionally, even though we’re all physically apart. A video call does wonders to ease the loneliness that this situation is causing. I’d include texting in this, but I can’t focus on texting people lately. It’s weird. But I’m dealing with it.

I’m using Hulu to live stream the news (although I’m trying to limit the amount of news I consume because too much is just bad for my mental health). Sometimes I download to podcasts so I have something to listen to while I walk. They’re usually news-related, but I have some in other genres. I downloaded the CDC app too, which I scroll through every now and then for added info.

I use Google calendar to stay organized and track my writing deadlines, as well as plan out a schedule so I can have personal accountability. I’m continuing to track my moods, anxiety, meds, sleep, and habits on my phone, which is important with bipolar anyway, but it also makes me feel kind of like I accomplished something. I’m trying to stick with my goal of drinking enough water. I might as well work on it now, and crossing off the cups I’ve had is a definite happiness booster.

A quick aside about goals right now: So many people have these big plans to use this time to get in shape or start their dream business or begin some sort of tremendous undertaking. And that’s wonderful for those so inclined. But not everyone has the luxury of having that option. Some people have been impacted by the coronavirus more than others. Essential workers are busting their butts every day still. Some people have family who’ve caught coronavirus. Some people have gotten sick themselves. But even people not in those circumstances don’t need to feel guilty for just getting through this time however they can, even if it’s just struggling to stay entertained.

I made a list of how to entertain myself, way back when this thing started. I wanted to stay busy, since boredom has proven itself one of my triggers. So I listed as many things as I could think of, and I planned on referring back to it if the excessive free time started to get to me. There weren’t very many things on the list (read, play video games, puzzles, etc), but I found myself unable to do most of the things on it anyway. It was almost like a depression thing, when you want to do something but can’t bring yourself to do the thing. But either wat, I don’t know if my old method of frantically distracting myself to run from boredom and the eventual mood episode it brings is the right one to use. I need to find and keep a sense of balance. I need to let go of what I can’t control but work on what I can. I need to recharge. I want to recharge.

My plan to do that will involve setting guidelines. I only want to watch or read the news in the morning, and not for too long. It will involve doing things I haven’t been doing lately, any things, just to get myself a change. Maybe I’ll crochet some hats (even though it’s spring now). Because maybe it’ll help relax my brain, help me heal even more. Maybe I’ll be struck with brilliant inspiration while mindlessly crocheting. Basically, my plan is to do stuff that’s helpful and then enjoy the good feelings after.

#quarantine #boredom #adhd #bipolar life #mental health #mental illness #routine #morning routine #things to do #uncertainty #trying to be productive #coronavirus #day 28

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donnerpartyofone · 7 years

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I had this totally trivial experience my sophomore year of high school that left a huge impression on me, that I still think about twenty years later. At that time I'd been in a spring and fall play since I was about 12. I liked the things I did at the local college, where I usually played an urchin or something, but the high school shit was just pointless. I hated all the plays, especially the musicals, and I always got cast as like a stupid ugly old lady or something, while the popular kids got cast as what they were in real life, the stars of everything. For a couple years though I just really thought I wanted to be an actress when I grew up, so I "didn't notice" that the whole thing gave me nightmares, including the pure anxiety of performing, and most especially the applause, which made me feel like someone with explosion-related ptsd. I was also just simply not accustomed to breaking rules or defying expectations of any kind, no matter how minor, so I excelled at ignoring my feelings. So one day I was sitting in the high school auditorium with my sides, waiting to audition for I think Bye Bye Birdy, when I suddenly realized I had totally no desire to be there. I didn't wanna audition and I REALLY didn't wanna be in the musical, and I was shocked by the revelation that nothing was keeping me there. Without even telling anyone, I just got up and left, walking the mile or so home in a daze. I never even considered being in a play again, and I still have nightmares about them.

This isn't one of them precisely, but this morning I had a dream that I was staying in a hotel somewhere with a group of friends, and I had decided to take these beatboxing or breakdancing lessons in one of the conference rooms for some godforesaken reason. The class was taught by a 75 year old white woman, and she began the session by making everyone freestyle rap. I couldn't think of any good reason for this and I can't even improvise let alone freestyle, so I decided to just sneak out. I went back to our suite where there were these humongous bullfrogs whose bellies barely fit in my palm, that I had to transfer from one terrarium to another. They weren't happy at all, but I sure was. Meanwhile I started to hear the instructor outside in the hall looking for me. Apparently I was supposed to buy a $170 text book as part of course registration, and if I didn't do that then they wouldn't break even, so everyone was on the hunt for me. I eventually heard my friends coming too, and tried to hide from them, but they found me, and started asking how many and which of the local aboriginal women I had slept with after ducking out of the class a couple hours ago. I had apparently been seen taking a few of them to bed and now one of them was pregnant, and I really needed to remember in no uncertain terms exactly who I had been with. I has so baffled by all my problems that it didn't even occur to me to remind everyone that it's biologically impossible for me to knock someone up. The end.

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iampikachuhearmeroar · 7 years

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Rant.

Okay, so, yesterday was the day that new uni students in Aus got their early offers for their desired courses. It was also the day that the government released a report about the drop out of rate of uni students at different uni's. Not that any of this matters to me much, considering the fact that I'm entering my 3rd year of uni and don't intend to drop out, since I have one more year to go on my degree bc of my double major, and so I intend to graduate next year or in 2019 depending on how my subjects work out (and also not counting other over-arching factors that impact my study, like socioeconomic background, the workload etc).

But there's one piece of completely condescending (in my opinion) advice that keeps getting thrown into the void for the new, bright faced, 18 year olds (for the most part) prospective students.This piece of advice advises these new students to "really think about the field" they're going to study, research it and then "think carefully" about their degrees before they're actually in them, so that they will apparently less likely to drop out in the long run. But how in the fuck are you meant to know at that age what the fuck you want to do with your life? How in the fuck do you actually know that uni is really right for you, until you try it? How in the fuck do you really know that the degree you picked is really for you when the "going to uni" thing shoved so thoroughly down your throat bc apparently it's the only way to be really successful in this world? Until, again, you try it to see if it fits you? etc etc etc. Hell, I'm still tackling all of those questions during uni break, heading into my THIRD year of uni at 21/22. Bc how the fuck am i going to make a living and career for myself in this shitty fucking economy, right?

But for a fun time jump, lets go back to 2013, when i was poorly preparing for my HSC and obsessing over my future in regards to uni. I was incredibly anxious and depressed. I was continually looking at every single fucking uni admissions guide for the lowest ATAR possible for a bachelor of arts in philosophy or BCA in theatre etc. I was also obsessing over my marks in general bc my marks in some subjects dropped from 80/90% right down to 60/75%. So I believed that I wasn't intelligent enough to get to uni, no matter what i did. All because both my depression and anxiety had convinced me that EVERYONE from both my former high school and the one i had transferred to, as well as my tafe class, KNEW that I was too fucking brainless of university. And this indicated to me that I was never enough.

But with my constant paralysing fear of failure that year amongst other thoughts as well, do you think I was really in any stable fucking state to "research the field" i wanted to go into, or to "think critically" about my chosen degree? or what the fuck i wanted to do with my life? OF COURSE THE FUCK NOT.

No lies here though, I pretty much spent almost every night of 2013 crying myself to sleep over the pressure that I heaped on myself to perform well in the HSC, as well as the stupid notion that I JUST HAD TO GET to uni. I posted so many emotional meltdown posts both on here and on facebook, stating how much i hated it etc, on how i couldn't stand the pressure of the HSC etc bc i was so fucking low. Finally, this culminated in me spending the 3 months after it trying to sleep for 10-13hrs a day bc i felt so fucking worthless and useless and didn't want to be seen by anyone i knew when i received my marks/atar etc. plus the point that i thought sleep was the only thing i was good at, lol. However, I will admit that part of this was a maturity issue; and that this actually still happens to me AT uni; but they're points I'll elaborate on later.

The above points though, are indicative to me, perhaps, of how many new uni students feel when they actually get to uni (and also during the hsc bur that isn't the point). Although they might have been or were high-achievers in the final years of HS, these students are not fully prepared for the pressure of uni, and so feel like they are falling behind in the heavy workload and amount of self-study they actually have to do. Fuck, even I found it hard although I’d already done tertiary study (i.e. my Advanced Diploma).

And this is where a job workshop that I attended at uni last year comes into play, and this debate gets down to the nitty gritty, i suppose. In one particular session the presenter (a careers advisor obvs) talked through the the many reasons of why people drop out of uni. One huge factor was body image at like 45% or something like that. The next few factors were ones such as other mental health factors (the stress, depression, anxiety) in again relation to the workloads, pressure and deadlines put on students and socioeconomic factors such as having to balance a job w/ uni or coming for a lower socioeconomic grouping/family situation. the last one i think, was distance study and like travel idk. But anyway. The most important ones were the mental health problems and the socioeconomic factors. Not all that bullshit about “thinking critically about the degree you’re going into or are in” or “researching the field” you’re going into etc,like the condescending advice says.

#life #about me #uni #uni life #shut up ilona #ilona gets angry #RANTY MCRANTRANT #but seriously though #ok i rant out of steam at the end and lost my train of thought #but whatever #enjoy the anger

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redscbdoils · 5 years

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anneedmonds · 5 years

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Life Update: End of the Baby Era

A fleeting break from tradition with this life update because I’m going to be talking mostly about me. My favourite subject. (Joke: I hate talking about myself unless I’ve had too much wine. In fact, I tend to stop people in their tracks when they try to ask me what I do for a living – I usually tell them that I work with computers and they are too bored to ask more!)

I’m talking mostly about me because I feel as though I’m at a weird old juncture in my life, one that has me wondering who the hell I am and what an earth I’m going to do next. I think that shopping for Angelica’s school uniform triggered it all off, this sense of being a bit lost and wondering about what the future holds, but in fact it’s a strange feeling that’s been bubbling away beneath the surface ever since we made the big move to Somerset.

I think it stems from being the sort of person that always has to be doing something, planning the Next Big Thing, working on a project, being so busy that I live in a state of perpetual low-key chaos and stress. Having two babies quite close together (18 months apart, not planned that way!) has been the most intense time imaginable, especially with work being the most busy it has ever been, and I think I worry that when school starts in September, and Ted starts a few mornings at nursery, I won’t quite know what to do with the extra time.

Actually that’s a lie; if I was entirely honest, my problem with September and the new starts is that I am forced to evaluate the era that is just about to come to a close. The baby era. I find myself tentatively asking myself how did I do? Could I have done better? In those rare moments of quiet, when I just sit and mull things over, I wonder whether I worked too much or should have worked more, whether I should have pulled in more help to save my sanity or turned down more jobs in order to be a completely full time Mum. I tick off the things I didn’t do: I haven’t taken them swimming once. I didn’t make gingerbread with them and get it all over the floor. I didn’t get enough photos of me with babies perched on my hip, or me asleep in a tangled nest of sheets with a newborn spreadeagled on top of my chest. I ask myself whether I was ever really present, in the moment, because I really can’t remember much at all.

I could do a huge list of the things we have done, including almost daily trips to the zoo and adventure park, walks with the dog, holidays in the car to Cornwall and Devon and London and Dorset, crazy chases around the house every afternoon (it’s a great house for running and hiding), discos, picnics, dressing up, shop games, hotel games, vet games, hospital games, early wake-ups every morning, drawn-out bedtimes every night, middle-of-the-night cuddling sessions, countless dribbles of Calpol over the bedsheets, endless tense exchanges between the adults as to where the in-ear thermometer is and who had it last…

I’ve been away from home for less than 2.5 percent of the time I’ve been a Mum, but I still fret that I could have done better and that I would do it better if I did it all over again. Maybe that’s why some people have another baby (I’m not, don’t get excited!), because there’s always the feeling that next time you will finally get it right.

Well. That was borderline depressing wasn’t it? Sorry about that! I don’t actively regret any part of what I did during the baby stage, I’m just sad that it’s pretty much over. It’s like a klaxon has sounded to tell me my time is up.

“FNARRRRRRR! Put down the flour, mothers! You’re about to make homemade play-dough, or bake cookies for the first time, but it’s TOO BLOODY LATE! You want to take them for a walk instead of plonking them down in front of Peppa Pig so that you can print, sign and scan the mortgage documents in peace? TOO LATE! They’re old enough to just amuse themselves anyway! They don’t need you anymore and they wouldn’t go on a walk with you anyway unless you bribe them with sweets! FNARRRRRRR!”

Talking of bribery, Angelica has cottoned on to the whole you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours system remarkably well. Maybe she will grow up to be a negotiator. Or a politician. (God.) Either way, she knows the value of her cooperation, especially when Ted is kicking off about his apple not being cut in the correct manner (ie: not cut up at all, he likes them whole, but he carries the bloody thing about for an hour and the dog almost always ends up getting it off him so I usually try to make him eat it chopped up in a bowl and he hates it) and there are two things that she has firmly planted on her demands list: games on the iPhone and sweets from Daddy’s retro sweet shop box.

Mr AMR got a huge box of sweets for his birthday last month and they’re all retro chews and sherbet dips and so on from the seventies and eighties – Angelica is obsessed. It’s like another world, one where Pom Bears and organic dried apple rings don’t exist. The games on the iPhone thing has had to be curbed, for the moment, because she got really into playing on these Toca Boca apps that let you play at being a vet or a train driver or a doctor. They’re a bit like Sims but for toddlers and she gets really immersed, carrying supplies through the hospital and visiting the patients and feeding them their lunch. She started waking up early just so she could ask to play on my phone, so that has been nipped in the bud. The phone games started as a lazy thing because I could go back to sleep for half an hour and she just carried out her doctor rounds, probably doing things like administering morphine and delivering tricky babies and amputating gangrenous legs using a selection of power tools. But the games are no more. It’s too early. Both in the day and in life.

I say that officially, in case Mr AMR is reading, but unofficially I let her play at grooming the Toca Boca horses last night when I was trying to wrestle Ted into his back-to-front Gro Bag and stop him from throwing his mattress out of the cot.

Ted has become Hulk Ted Smash over the course of the last month. Not only does he thrash about in his sleep, knocking into the bars of the cot so that it sounds as though a minotaur is trying to ride through the wall of the house, he likes to dismantle his sleeping arrangements over and over again between the hours of 7 and 9pm. It used to be that he stripped himself, did a wee on the mattress and then called for help, but now he is trapped in his back-to-front sleeping bag (thanks for that tip, readers!) and can’t unzip it, so he amuses himself by taking off the sheets and folding the mattress in half (actually quite a phenomenally difficult thing to achieve) and then sticking both legs through the bottom slats. Before calling for help.

Whoo, bedtimes are still the most testing time of the day. I think (still) that it’s because you really feel as though you’re finally owed a bit of a bloody break, thanks very much, and your brain sees 7pm (or whatever time, 5pm would be idea, hohoho) as the cut-and-dry deadline for any child-related shenanigans. The other night, when Ted was still going at it with his mattress-bending at 9.15pm I ended up bellowing this is Mummy’s time now! I’m not available!

He just stared at me blankly and said, “ham?”

Ted is saying “ham” a lot at the moment. I have no idea why, other than that he really likes ham. But the more he says it, especially in answer to completely unrelated questions, the more we all laugh and the more he thinks it’s funny. He’s chatting away like the clappers, now, and if I read a story to him he copies every single word. Which is sweet, but at the same time it makes it really hard to read – it’s like having an echo that makes no sense.

In other news, Ted did something the other day that was both highly convenient and potentially disastrous, all at the same time. I knew something was up because things had gone quiet in the living room and then, when I called him, he said “coming Mama!” and arrived in the kitchen holding his (very full) nappy between forefinger and thumb. He had done a poo, carefully taken off the nappy pants and walked to the kitchen without dropping any of the poo onto the floor. To be frank, it’s almost more than I can do and I’m thirty-six years older than him. Not that I wear nappy pants, you understand.

Oh God, I must dash! Angelica has had her taster morning at school and I’ve just realised that the time they’ve said to pick up is actually the time when they’ll be coming out of the gates! Not like in nursery when you just saunter in between x time and y time and everyone’s all chilled out and “here’s a painting with some twigs and dirty feathers glued to it, it’s a duck, yes that’s an acorn representing its one eye”. I have a drawer full of those paintings. Ah, such excruciatingly happy days, tinged with such anxiety that time keeps flying by too fast! Why is being a parent such a bloody emotional rollercoaster?

The post Life Update: End of the Baby Era appeared first on A Model Recommends.

Life Update: End of the Baby Era was first posted on July 3, 2019 at 3:35 pm. ©2018 "A Model Recommends". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at [email protected] Life Update: End of the Baby Era published first on https://medium.com/@SkinAlley

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nancygduarteus · 5 years

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Under the Depression Helmet

The last two weeks have been frenetic for Bre Hushaw, who is now known to millions of people as the girl in the depression helmet.

Hushaw has been hearing from people all around the world who want to try it, or at least to know how it works. Her life as a meme began when she agreed to an on-camera interview with the local-news site AZfamily.com for a story headlined “Helmet Approved by FDA to Treat Depression Available in Arizona.” The feel-good tale of Hushaw’s miraculous recovery from severe depression was tossed into the decontextualizing maw of the internet and distilled down to a screenshot of a young woman looking like a listless stormtrooper.

Jokes poured in. Some of the most popular, each with more than 100,000 likes on Twitter, include: “If u see me with this ugly ass helmet mind ur business.” “Friend: hey everything alright? Me, wearing depression helmet: yeah I’m just tired.” “The depression helmet STAYS ON during sex.”

Hushaw has been tracking the virality, sometimes cringing and sometimes laughing. She replies to as many serious inquiries as she can, while finishing up her senior year at the University of Northern Arizona before starting a job in marketing. A year ago, she didn’t think she was going to live to graduation. Back when she was 10 years old, her mother died. Her depression symptoms waxed and waned from then on, and they waxed especially when she heard the gunshots on her campus during a shooting at the school in 2015. She tried many medications over the years—14, by her count.

“From age 15 until I was 20, I was extremely suicidal, and I was self-harming,” she told me last week. She recounted multiple related hospitalizations, and a gradual loss of faith in the medical system.

So last year, when Hushaw learned of a helmet that promised to magnetically rewire her brain, she saw this as an obvious yes. The helmet contains magnets that exert energy on the electrical functioning of the brain, a process known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. Hushaw went to a clinic and absorbed electrical impulses for 20 minutes every (business) day for six weeks.

[Read: Why a ‘lifesaving’ depression treatment didn't pass clinical trials]

Though Hushaw likens the feeling to being “tapped” by a pencil, the chin strap makes it appear as if the helmet is going to blast her with energy. This didn’t help with the jokes. I retweeted the news story with, “After wearing it you feel like a weight has been lifted off you.” That made me feel clever until I actually read the story and saw that Hushaw said almost exactly the same thing—“I felt like there was a huge blanket that was lifted off my shoulders and I felt completely free”—referring to suicidal depression.

Hushaw is okay with it. Despite the mockery, she’s overall thrilled by the attention given to the helmet. The image above is a recreation—she went back to the clinic to take the photo, and she sent it to me. I didn’t ask her to do this. But she is passionate: “I just want to make sure that people are getting help,” she said. “I had a friend commit suicide on my campus and I just never want that to happen again.”

As she put it multiple times, “It actually, really saved my life.”

The attention Hushaw’s story received is testament to how few people know what to make of TMS. Even when I surveyed physician friends about it, several hadn’t heard of it, and no one had seen it used in more than a rare case. It is certainly not woven into typical treatment plans.

Researchers at some academic institutions are taking the technology seriously. Yale has a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Research Clinic, and the service is offered at Johns Hopkins. There have been numerous studies suggesting promising clinical uses, including one this week in the journal Neurology. But the mechanisms proposed are vague. TMS may be beneficial in treating addiction, according to a 2017 paper in Nature Neuroscience Reviews, by “influencing neural activity ... throughout the brain.” According to the Mayo Clinic: “Though the biology of why TMS works isn’t completely understood, the stimulation appears to impact how the brain is working, which in turn seems to ease depression symptoms and improve mood.”

Yes, TMS seems to impact how the brain is working. These statements are not abdications of explanatory burden, but come close to the extent of what is known. Serenity Mental Health Centers, the Arizona clinic that provided Hushaw with the electromagnetic treatment, claim that “people with depression often have areas of their brain with decreased activity, and people with [obsessive-compulsive disorder] often have overactive areas of their brain, so TMS stimulates and resets those regions of the brain.”

The notion that the device has dramatic effects on the structure or function of the brain is at odds, though, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s classification. In March, the regulatory agency issued a rule deeming them Class II medical devices, along with electric wheelchairs and pregnancy tests, which means that they are presumed to be safe. Most therapeutic devices that affect human physiology are Class III, which would certainly be the case with anything that “resets the brain.” The FDA argued that a Class II designation would “enhance patients’ access to beneficial innovation, in part by reducing regulatory burdens by placing the device into a lower device class than the automatic Class III assignment.”

BRE HUSHAW

The first TMS helmet approved by the FDA, Neurostar, was for treatment of major depressive disorder, in 2008. Others have been since, as the market began to boom. On Tuesday, Brainsway, the company that made the helmet used by Hushaw, announced its initial public offering. Brainsway was also approved for obsessive-compulsive disorder in August of 2018, and the publicity efforts around this approval were what eventually led to Hushaw’s news fame, according to the marketing director of the clinic that provides the helmet, Sunrise Mental Health Centers.

This marketing director, Candise Miller, has her own miraculous personal story of recovery via TMS. “My life is forever changed. I’m a completely different person,” she told me. She asked me to include a link to the clinic’s home page, which features her testimonial but does not mention that she is director of marketing.

Until the FDA’s new classification this year, the agency had reigned in marketing of such health claims by requiring pre-market approval for TMS devices. Manufacturers had to submit evidence that the devices had no immediately obvious adverse effects and at least a small amount effectiveness. For instance, the FDA said it based approval of Brainsway for OCD on a single study of 100 people, which showed improvements in some patients. A control group wore actual TMS helmets that secretly weren’t turned on. Presumably due to placebo effect, this group also saw an 11 percent decrease in symptoms.

Like most treatments in psychiatry, there is value in showing up, and in believing you are being treated. These and other mechanisms are mysterious, and the effects are unreliable—attesting to the complexity of mental illness, and the many factors that go into causing and treating it.

The basic idea of shocking the system into compliance has deep roots. Since electroconvulsive therapy was introduced almost a century ago, the approach has been shown to unreliably but sometimes dramatically effective for treatment of severe depression. At least partly due to its barbaric connotations and the uncertainty of the outcomes, electroconvulsive therapy remains one of the most controversial treatments in medicine. It isn’t practiced by most psychiatrists.

The electrical charges delivered by TMS are meant to be more focused, but still very powerful. Inside the helmet, a series of looped wires are connected to capacitors that pass electrical currents through them in bursts. Pulses generate a secondary electric current that alters the electric fields in the brain, depolarizing neurons and causing them to fire. The scalp and skull do not shield the electrical processes in the brain from such a force any more than a cubicle wall shields your ears from a colleague who is incapable of keeping their phone on silent.

Whether or how TMS would cause lasting change in brain function is not entirely clear. The concept was introduced in 1985 at the University of Sheffield, in England, as a diagnostic and mapping tool for the motor cortex. The technology can reliably be used to make a person’s legs jerk, but the ostensible aim of the current treatments is to reach beyond transient cortical activity and fundamentally alter the brain’s circuitry. And unlike the invasive neurological procedure of deep-brain stimulation, which has proven useful in treating OCD as well as Parkinson’s disease and other conditions, the helmet doesn’t require any holes in the skull and electrodes planted in the brain.

But TMS’s marketing claims raise questions about how the helmet’s electrical currents could reach the brain’s emotion-driving portions without causing any unwanted cortical activity or serious adverse effects. In electroconvulsive therapy, a person must be anesthetized and made to convulse, and this was always seen as an unfortunate byproduct of the attempt to reset deeper parts of the nervous system. TMS requires no sedation, and only rarely causes seizures. (The sessions are still supposed to be closely monitored by a licensed technician—and the helmet is not supposed to be worn in public, as was implied in most of the jokes that hit the internet last week.)

The only people who claim to know precisely how these helmets treat such complex sociocultural-behavioral conditions as depression and anxiety are the ones selling treatment with the machine, or machines themselves. As TeeJay Tripp, the medical director of Arizona’s Sunrise Mental Health Centers who treated Hushaw, understands it, TMS activates the prefrontal cortex, which can lead to downstream effects that ultimately impact the amygdala or other deep structures tied to emotion.

The lack of understanding about what might be happening in those deep structures is paired with uncertainty about what parts of the cortex should be stimulated in the first place. The common wisdom among TMS practitioners is that depression occurs in the right side of the brain and anxiety on the left. Depending on which you have, the energy needs to be focused on one side. But this two-sided model of the brain is not supported by any neuroscience text I can find.

In addition to treatments for depression and anxiety, Sunrise Mental Health Centers also offers to provide TMS for: “ADD/ADHD, addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, autism, bipolar disorder, chronic pain, eating disorders, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, stroke rehabilitation, and substance abuse.” The FDA has only approved TMS for depression and OCD, but the approach can still legally be used “off-label.” When asked where in the brain electricity should be applied for these various conditions, Tripp says he bases his treatment on a mix of trial and error, along with whatever small studies have been done on any particular condition. Most notably among these uses, he and other practitioners have begun putting the helmets on children with autism.

I asked Tripp if he was concerned about potential long-term repercussions, or simply about rewiring the wrong area. He cited the fact that the FDA had approved the helmet 10 years ago (for use in depression), and there has been no research showing long-term harm yet. Miller, Sunrise’s marketing director, believes that TMS’s overhead so far has prevented it from being more widely known and used; she put the ballpark cost of a Brainsway at $200,000. She also contends that uptake has been slow because of “Western medicine’s reliance on pharmaceuticals,” and the insurance companies’ unwillingness to pay for it.

Insurance companies are increasingly covering the treatment, though. Direct-to-consumer marketing has increased demand in recent years, practitioners tell me, and many plans will cover the $10,000 to $12,000 treatment for people who haven’t responded to trials of medications and therapy.

This is how LeeAnn Tucker afforded six weeks in the helmet. A 47-year-old former elementary school teacher in the Houston Area, she spent two decades “on and off of every antidepressant,” she says. She has been diagnosed with bipolar II, and she also has generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, and panic attacks. The anxiety has led her to develop agoraphobia. “I don’t leave my house unless I absolutely have to. It’s just bad,” she says. “Sometimes if I’m in the grocery store I will have to leave my cart and just go home.”

Tucker has also been suicidal. “The suicidal thoughts were so severe that I never told anyone,” she told me, “not my doctor, not my husband. Because when you tell someone, then they’ll try to save you.”

A few years ago, she began seeing a new psychiatrist who had a video commercial for the Neurostar TMS helmet playing on a loop in his waiting room. (Neurostar provides all marketing material for patients. Clinicians buy the machine, and they also pay for each use of it.) She was convinced to try it. She was “tapped,” as they call it, “on the left side for depression, and on the right side for anxiety.” She sent me a video from her phone of her undergoing treatment. Her face is expressionless, and the piercing blasts sound like laser guns.

After six weeks of daily treatment, Tucker saw no improvement. “I would love to say it worked, but I felt no different when it was over,” she says. “I’m still depressed as fuck.”

One thing that did help, though, was that Tucker made friends with her technician, Allison Rose Zartier, over the course of weeks of treatment. “Having someone like Allison administer TMS was actually the best part for me,” Tucker says. Zartier, who is now the TMS coordinator at a business called Elite Medical Wellness in Lake Charles, Louisiana, says she finds it unbelievable that some practitioners leave people alone during the 20-to-30-minute treatments. Some of the biggest benefits she has seen have come through talking to people while the magnets are firing. She says that a recently retired CEO needed to find a way to have purpose with all of his free time. Another extremely isolated person felt better after Zartier recommended a dog.

Advocates of the depression helmet consider the treatment great if it ends up actually helping even a small number (and harming fewer than it helps). For ECT and TMS, and anything that proposes to offer a hard restart to your central nervous system, the health risks cannot be zero—and should be expected to be significant. TMS and other high-tech, high-cost treatments also have the potential to divert focus from social, structural, and preventive support—the basic elements of health that, when ignored, often manifest as depressive symptoms.

[Read: The diet that might cure depression]

The medical model of depression tends to offer treatments that imply they can fix emotions that may actually be related to a need to feel valued and secure. Addressing these and other basic imperatives—to sleep and eat well, and be physically active and socially connected—is the first priority for treating and preventing most illnesses, mental and otherwise. This emphasis can be lost when an expensive magnetic helmet that promises to make the feelings somehow simply go away is seen as anything other than a last resort.

Zartier went through TMS herself, and told me she was able to stop taking antidepressants shortly after. She now runs a Facebook support group for TMS patients, in which Hushaw is also active. Zartier says the shared experience of having gone through this process fosters a sense of community. It’s also a tool for recruiting prospective patients. Zartier says the $12,000 cost can be well worth it. She tells people it’s like “going to the gym, but for your brain.”

That community is growing. “It keeps climbing faster, especially in the last four months. The word is finally getting out there,” Zartier says, which she believes is partly because Neurostar is now running television commercials. And she’s seeing ever more parents in the concerned Facebook community bringing in children.

“I had a 10th grader who was suicidal, and I saw the pain in her eyes,” she says. “The younger you are, the more the brain can be affected—their brains seem to want to change.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/04/depression-helmet/587242/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 5 years

Text

Under the Depression Helmet

The last two weeks have been frenetic for Bre Hushaw, who is now known to millions of people as the girl in the depression helmet.

[Read: Why a ‘lifesaving’ depression treatment didn't pass clinical trials]

As she put it multiple times, “It actually, really saved my life.”

BRE HUSHAW

After six weeks of daily treatment, Tucker saw no improvement. “I would love to say it worked, but I felt no different when it was over,” she says. “I’m still depressed as fuck.”

[Read: The diet that might cure depression]

“I had a 10th grader who was suicidal, and I saw the pain in her eyes,” she says. “The younger you are, the more the brain can be affected—their brains seem to want to change.”

Article source here:The Atlantic

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