#I feel like healthy people have no concept of how often medical professionals are just doing shit

[chompy-jester]

Another weird thing I hear used against those in CDD spaces is "you can tell these people don't know anything because they would all use the word 'parts' not 'alters' or 'fictives' cuz therapists don't let you use terms like that". Not only is this false, but psychologists are not required to exclusively use clinical terms accepted in strict medical literature. If you call your identity states "inner people" or something because that's what you've always understood them to be, therapists will often use that term as well and allow you to self describe your experiences.

Similarly, a common misconception and assumption is "You can't act like alters are people, a therapist wouldn't let you do that" because again, yes they would. In fact treatment involves treating a patient's alternate identities individually as "real" people the way that they likely never experienced. A practitioner qualified to treat a CDD is not going to tell you not to call another alter a person because they don't meet their definition of personhood, they are going to talk to them in accordance with how they understand their own identity because they exist as they do for a reason. A psychologist isn't going to go "hey, cut that out I'm not gonna pretend you're 4 year old 'Sally'. You're John so I'm treating you as the 44 year old man you are. 'Sally' isn't a real person". Sounds like a malpractice case waiting to happen. There is nothing constructive, helpful, or healthy about this denial approach that people assume that any "sane" therapist would use. It is not a treatment modality, it's just what some people want to happen because they can't comprehend why a medical professional would "humor" these alternate identities. But it's counterproductive when you're dealing with a patient so traumatized that they've dissociated to develop multiple identities. Hell even if the person were truly only pretending to have DID, that wouldn't be a helpful approach.

I think a lot of it comes from the discomfort around and inherent strangeness of the concept that one person can somehow be five "people". They're "parts" at most but the parts vs people thing is so nuanced. Someone with DID is human, there is no "real" them. Perception of self, identity, and personhood are so complicated and personal. The thing with DID is that you truly do not have a singular sense of personhood or identity. So how that feeling is defined, depends on who you ask.

Some people even with DID frame it as "it's not the existence of multiple people but less than one whole person being fragmented" which is not inherently incorrect for someone to describe themselves. But both can be true, you are the fragments of what would have been one cohesive identity, and exist with different perceptions of identity and personhood. Really saying someone with DID is less than a whole person feels dehumanizing but at the same time that is genuinely how some people feel about living with it. Like a bunch of pieces of a person, especially if these parts aren't very complex. So I wouldn't tell these people "no you have to see all your parts as whole PEOPLE" because their sense of personhood is not mine to dictate. For some, these identities feel so distinctly different and complex due to the extent of dissociation. I just don't see myself being able to tell someone they can't consider themselves a person. Sure socially, the "outside world" won't see you as 15 people or care that you have DID but you can still perceive yourself as you do, and as a person. It's part of the survival mechanism to do so, regardless of how uncomfortable that is for someone else. Fuck's sake, I doubt the people who feel so strongly about denying personhood to those with CDDs truly have had strangers irl with DID asking to be treated individually as different people but I'm fairly certain that most of them have unknowingly interacted with someone that has DID. But I've seen some people get so pissed at the mere idea of how someone with it perceives themselves internally. It's a covert condition, most people with it don't want strangers treating them differently but people act like they're all just going to Olive Garden or some shit asking the servers to call them Naruto and screaming ableism if they don't. If anyone, typically people close to those with DID are the only ones that they wish to know different alters on a personal basis, with a few exceptions like with any disorder. Chances are your coworker isn't gonna aggressively demand that you regard them as 25 individual people but it's like the people passionate about this invent people to get mad at based on some kid they saw using Pluralkit or some TikToks reposted to a cringe comp on Youtube.

Like personally, I don't care what people think of me but to say I'm less than a person is objectively pretty fucked up and to think I should have a therapist condition me to perceive myself otherwise when that has the potential to compromise the safety of someone dissociating to survive, is just as well.

[yieldfruit]

my friend is getting her bachelor’s in psychology and recently i’ve been noticing that whenever we talk about an issue, she will insert a psych theory or concept she learned about into the conversation, basically trying to explain why someone is acting a certain way. i don’t like that she does this at all, especially when i’m talking about a personal issue because it feels like a therapy session that i didn’t ask for. i know she loves learning so i don’t want to discourage that, but how do i tell her that i don’t want her to bring up psych theories into our conversation? also because sometimes they’re not even fitting to the issue, but she thinks they are. i know she means well, but it seems like whenever she brings up a theory she’s trying to seem like she knows it all

Oh my goodness...yes, I hear you. I wouldn't want to rain on someone's parade so I would just kind of not engage in psych talk with her. Some of the most, well, difficult to be around/in need of the help themselves people I have known have been those in the psych field. Some very sweet people, but generally with quite a few issues themselves thus drawing them into that field. I would just let her be. For what it's worth, I do think it's silly/funny people bring up buzzwords like "gaslighting" and "narcissism" all the time now to talk about anyone they don't like (especially in the dating sphere) when really, it's just called "sin nature" and "selfishness", you know? Like, really, we're all narcissists in the sense of being consumed with ourselves and Jesus provides a way out...to take up our cross and follow Him and not ourselves.

I also have to sigh at all the psych/therapy talk out there, and I don't know how much it's actually truly helping people–how many people I have personally known, and even those in the public eye that we see, that utilize mental health "professionals" and medications and still end up committing suicide. No, I think it's often a soul issue and most in the psych field are worldly in this regard as they do not have biblical-based wisdom they give to people/sharing the Gospel and the Word with people, which truly saves and is our hope. They utilize worldly methods that do not save and at best put a band-aid on anything much, much deeper. Also, it used to be people just had really good friends they could be themselves with/talk transparently with and loving relationships and healthy community trumped any need to pay money to someone to listen to/regurgitate and giving "tools" to overcome whatever it is. Most people just need: love and someone to listen, I.E., people who will tell you the truth in love like godly, loving friends, 1-3 at the most, whether via friends or family. I wish there was strong Christian relationships in this sense. I do believe the church and Christian community has failed greatly in this regard to a point of embarassment.

[missmentelle]

Everyone has mental health, but not everyone has a mental ilness. It sounds really logical, but I was wondering how this influences people's lifes and the way mental health campaigns have or haven't an impact? When I hear people speaking about their mental health I often feel invalidated because it looks like everyone is doing bad. But I think it's dfiferent because of my mental ilnesses? Even if my mental health is okay, things are still not okay and I don't know, this is very unclear

To be honest, I actually think we actually make too much of a distinction between "mental illness" and "mental health" - those aren't really separate concepts, and the line between "people with diagnosed mental illnesses" and "people just experiencing general bad mental health" is not really a clear line at all.

Think about physical health. Some people have distinct, specific physical illnesses - things like type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis, cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, lupus, or asthma. These are the sorts of illnesses where you either have them or you don't. We often aren't totally sure what causes them, and we might not have any permanent way to cure them - although we do often have therapies available that let people lead normal lives even with these diseases.

At the same time, every single one of us experiences physical health. Our physical health is on a spectrum, from "nearly perfect health" to "extremely unwell", and the state of our health will likely change throughout our lifetime. It's possible to be in general poor health without having a diagnosable illness - if you spent a few months living on junk food, drinking heavily, not sleeping properly and not getting any exercise, you would quickly start to feel absolutely awful. You might not actually develop a diagnosable illness in that time, but your health would certainly start to suffer - you might start feeling out-of-shape and out-of-breath when you tried to do physical activities, you'd probably develop digestive issues, your blood pressure and cholesterol might rise, etc.

The relationship between physical illness and physical health isn't always a simple one. Being in poor physical health can eventually cause you to develop a physical illness - if you eat poorly and don't exercise for years at a time, you can eventually develop hypertension or Type 2 diabetes. At the same time, though, having a physical illness does not automatically mean you are in poor overall health - a Type 1 diabetic who manages their condition correctly, eats well, and runs 5k every day may be in better general health than a non-diabetic person who leads a very unhealthy lifestyle. These things are complicated, and we can't always draw firm lines between "healthy" and "sick".

The same thing applies to mental health and mental illness.

Some mental illnesses are a straightforward "you have this condition or you don't" situation - this would include things like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. We aren't always sure what causes these conditions - they likely have a strong genetic component, and sometimes it seems like they just happen to people.

At the same time, though, everyone has mental health. If you are living in stressful situations or not maintaining your mental health, you can start to experience poor mental health - you can start to have difficulty concentrating, low mood, social withdrawal, low motivation, irritability, etc. You don't necessarily have to meet the criteria for a mental illness to be in poor mental health, in the same way that you don't have to have a physical illness to be in poor physical health.

And again, the relationship between mental illness and general mental health is complicated. A person who has poor mental health for a long time might eventually be diagnosed with clinical depression or anxiety. And at the same time, having a diagnosed mental illness doesn't guarantee poor general mental health. A person with bipolar disorder who is taking their medication and managing their condition properly may be in better general mental health on a day-to-day basis than a person without a mental illness who is dealing with something stressful and not able to find healthy coping mechanisms. These things are complicated, and we can't always draw a line between "THESE people are affected by mental illness" and "THESE people aren't" - that's sort of not how mental health works.

I guess I just... don't understand how someone else's mental health struggles would invalidate yours? Multiple people can struggle at the same time, with the same thing - we don't have a quota for how many people are allowed to experience mental health problems at the same time. I think if we're going to really break down the stigma around mental health struggles, we need people to understand that mental health affects everyone, and not just the people who have been formally diagnosed with a mental illness.

There are a lot of reasons why someone might not have a formal diagnosis of a mental illness - they might not be able to afford professional mental health care. They might not feel comfortable accessing care. Their symptoms might not quite reach the threshold for a diagnosis, but still be seriously impacting their life. They might have a diagnosis but choose not to share that information. Gatekeeping who is "mentally ill enough" to count or to speak about their issues doesn't really help us make the kinds of positive change we need to make on mental health - it shuts out people who don't have the education or resources to put a formal label on their problems, and it lets other people pretend that they don't need to care about mental health because they don't have a formal metal illness and it will never happen to them. The reality is that mental health and mental illness will impact everyone in different ways, and we all benefit from hearing as many perspectives and experiences of it as possible. Everyone’s mental health experiences are valid. 

The idea of spreading more awareness about mental health and opening up discussion is not to make people compete to see who deserves to be labelled mentally ill. The idea is to normalize the fact that mental health struggles are a part of the human experience, and to make people realize that they aren't alone in dealing with this. When a lot of people go through a stressful or traumatic event - like a war, or a natural disaster, or a global pandemic that impacts every human life on earth - it's natural for there to be more people experiencing mental health struggles, and that's okay. Instead of worrying about who is "truly" mentally ill and who isn't, we should focus on learning more about mental health, pushing back against stereotypes, and making sure that supports are in place for anyone who might feel like they need them. MM

[pluraldeepdive]

The Website That Started Natural Multiplicity

Disclaimer: This is a post covering a deep dive of archived events that took place in the past. DO NOT harass or send hate towards anyone mentioned.

Introduction

So, who came up with natural multiplicity? When I’ve asked this question, most people reply by saying “Nobody! It’s always existed!” But that’s not exactly what I was asking them. Sure, the experience has always existed, I agree with them there. But what I’m asking about is the name! Someone was experiencing or observing something and then they put a name to it. They decided to name it natural multiplicity—so who did that? Who came up with that? 

Through my deep dive, I ended up finding the answer for myself.

As you may have read in one of my previous posts, multiplicity and multiple personality were terms that were often used interchangeably prior to the 21st century. They were used exclusively in reference to DID (more often called MPD at the time). Their origins are clinical, and they also held a lot of importance to the pre-Internet and early Internet dissociative community. (See my post on that here.) During this time, multiplicity and multiple personality meant a trauma-based dissociative disorder. The term natural multiplicity did not exist at that time—at least not in any relation to DID.

Prior to the term natural multiplicity, discussions about multiplicity being natural were usually discussions about how it’s natural to dissociate after trauma. Whenever someone mentioned that multiplicity was not a disorder to them, it was usually because the terms disorder or even MPD/DID had negative connotations to them, because they personally didn’t want to identify with medical terminology for other reasons, because they were not personally distressed by their alters, or because they had reached a stage in recovery where they were no longer struggling—not because they saw the experience as inherently non-dissociative or non-traumagenic.

But someone came along and kickstarted a changed in that narrative. This person was experiencing something that they felt wasn’t trauma-based or dissociative...and believed that it was the same multiplicity that everyone else was referring to as trauma-based and dissociative. This person decided to take that concept and redefine it to be inherently not trauma-based, not dissociation, and not pathological.

So, who was that person? Who decided to name something that was very obviously not DID the equivalent to natural DID? Well, your answer is: Astraea’s Web. 

Evidence & Archives

Evidence of this wasn’t really hard to come by because, well...they’ve talked it! While they don’t go around bragging about it, it’s certainly come up a fair amount of times. Other people have talked about it, as well.

“The concepts of natural multiplicity and healthy multiplicity are very new. We only introduced them about ten years ago on our website, and while several other websites exist now and plenty of online multiples know about these ideas (whether they agree with them or not), this is still a very small subset of the online multiplicity community, which is a very small subset of multiples in general. Most people do not know about these ideas because they haven’t been publicised enough; that is what Pavilion is for, but it’s gotten off to a very slow start.” - From Bluejay Young (a member of Astraea Household) on Livejournal Multiplicity. (2005)

“Astraea’s page was the first multiplicity page that was NOT about DID.” - From Amorpha System on Livejournal Multiplicity. (2005)

“(1995) Astraea’s Web, the first Internet website to describe non-disordered and self-recognized multiplicity, goes online in September.” - From Multiple Personality Controversy on Psychology Wikia (2006)

“I’m also putting Astraea’s Web back in. It was the first website to propose the idea of healthy multiplicity.” - From Bluejay Young (a member of Astraea Household) on the DID/MPD Controversy Wikipedia discussion. (2007)

“It’s important to allow the concept to be inclusive of everyone who fits, regardless of past abuse history or origins, much as is currently being done for ‘multiplicity.’” - From Anthony Temple (a member of Astraea Household) on “A brief history of midcontinuum”. (2007)

And, yes, this all checks out. During my deep dive, I could find no website that existed before Astraea’s Web that talked about multiplicity/DID as something natural; natural meaning not trauma-based, not dissociative, and not pathological in their own words. Here are my posts on how they introduced natural multiplicity to the Internet:

Their first theory. (1998 or earlier)

How natural multiplicity went from a theory to a fact. (2000)

When they began separating multiplicity from DID. (1999)

Boycotting DID. (2000-2003)

But it’s also important to hear it straight from the source. The archived essay “What a long, strange trip it’s been...” was published sometime in 2002 or possibly earlier. In this, members of Astraea Household reflected on their journey to joining the dissociative community, realizing that they were actually not dissociative, and introducing their idea of natural multiplicity to the Internet.

Part 1 (Discovering DID & their multiplicity)

Part 2 (Coming out & wanting DID normalized)

Part 3 (Experiences in the dissociative community, doubt, introducing natural multiplicity, & backlash)

Part 4 (The empowered multiple community)

My Thoughts

Obviously, natural multiplicity has evolved and changed so much over time. Present day non-dissociative plurality is so different from its origin! It’s like a dinosaur versus a duck. One comes from the other, and there are similarities, but they shouldn’t be looked at like the same exact thing. Even though the term natural multiplicity has died out, and it’s ableist as Hell, I still find its origins so fascinating and I hope that you guys can agree.

Like I’ve stated several times before, I don’t fault people much for their past actions. The times and circumstances were very, very different. DID research back then was bare bones, filled with inaccuracies, and being bombarded with controversy and skepticism. Also, Astraea’s Web has always presented itself as an anti-psych website so it’s not that much of a surprise that they were against diagnoses.

While I personally do not agree with how Astraea Household went about certain things, I could also empathize with the situation that led up to them coining natural multiplicity. Astraea Household’s journey read to me like a story of misdiagnosing a self-diagnosis...a mis-self-diagnosis?

Sometimes people self-diagnose because it feels like a certain disorder is the only explanation they have for their experiences. It can be frightening if that one explanation turns out to not be the answer—ESPECIALLY if you got heavily involved in communities related to that disorder.

If I self-diagnosed DID but then later realized that I didn’t relate to its causation or symptoms that much, then I’d probably just think I was experiencing something else. I wouldn’t be so inclined to think that it was the professionals who were completely wrong...but what if DID was the closest explanation I had for my experiences? What if most of my friends were in the dissociative community? What if me being multiple was a big part of my closest relationships? What if I had been telling people I was multiple for years and years? What if I had a hugely successful website on me being multiple? What if I had a big influence on the dissociative community? What if my entire career revolved around me being multiple? Damn, maybe I would have come up with natural multiplicity as well in that case. (Not saying this is why Astraea Household did it.)

Anyways, please go and make your own opinions on this stuff. That’s why I share it.

[amity-moonrise]

except endos are using terms that are quite literally connected to or even stolen from CDD systems when endos themselves are not related to CDD systems whatsoever. Like it or not, our communities are interlinked in a way it shouldn’t, which to outsiders, will make it seem like we are all people who are just faking it. Outsiders won’t know the difference between an endo and a traumagenic, if they see system or the word DID they will generalize the community. This impacts how medical professionals see us on the internet. The reason why I ask endos to change and do better is because they make up the bigger population and they are also currently enabling ableism to thrive in their communities.

Im not trying to “control” endos, im saying that they need to change and be their own thing instead of taking from CDD systems. If they want help from me or someone else, fine. If they wanna help themselves, fine. I have no issues with that. I don’t think you understood my point that I was trying to make in the post. No where in my post did I ever try to say that “oh you must come to me and me only” it was MERELY A SUGGESTION to those who find my blog a safe space or are comfortable enough asking me.

Also, I do take endos seriously, if you don’t think i do, just know, we are still new to trying to understand non traumagenic plurality, we’re gonna make mistakes about it, but that doesn’t mean we dont take them seriously. Yes, to some extent, we dont share the same beliefs as pro endos, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t respect or acknowledge that plurality can come in different forms, because it possibly can, I just won’t take it as pure scientific fact without proper studies and research. I don’t accept endogenic plurality or willowgenic plurality as pure fact because there is no confirmed research, BUT THERE ARE THEORIES THAT HIGHLIGHT PLURAL TRAITS, like Carl Jung’s emergent personas concept, where people seemingly put on different personas in different situations. These kinds theories acknowledge non-traumagenic plural traits. If the human mind can behave like this in a healthy singlet, who’s to say it can’t behave in other ways. What if it’s genetic? Environmental? Can spirituality play a factor? Point is, I don’t fully believe it as fact because it has yet to be proven, but that doesn’t mean the theory doesn’t exist at all. I can acknowledge something without believing it as fact. That is why I am still anti endo.

Also, since when are xenogenders even pushing out the nonbinary community??? Gender is a fuckin spectrum, I don’t understand what you are trying to say here because I have literally never heard of this, and I say this as someone who is literally nonbinary. The only people who are actually pushing out nonbinary people are people who cant fathom someone not existing in a binary, aka, cis people and to some extent, parts of the trans community. People forget that nonbinary people fall under the trans umbrella, yet we are often shoved or isolated out of the trans community because we don’t fall in the binary. I don’t think xenogenders are the problem, it’s people who forget that gender is not a binary.

If im missing something, feel free to tell me all about it because I have never heard of xenogenders ever pushing nonbinary people out.

Ever since I made that post about the whole bullying thing on endos, my whole view of that side of the community has changed drastically.

No, I am still anti endo, but this time its just simply because of the scientific fact that you can’t be a system without trauma. HOWEVER, I understand that plurality is often interpreted differently, and I feel like part of the reason why theres so much discourse on this topic is because pro endos don’t have the language to express what they are actually trying to say.

Plurality in general, isn’t the same as DID/OSDD. In fact, it operates differently, theres often different ways it can happen, and I feel like people are just not using the right terminology to describe it.

Take tulpamancy for an example. Originally, tulpamancy is a Buddhist practice done to create a tulpa, which is a type of manmade spirit similar to an egregore or a servitor. Their main purpose is to aid the person who created them. They don’t exist in the mind, they exist outside of the mind as a manmade spirit.

But the pro endo/non traumagenic community misunderstood this practice and turned it into something completely different. While I understand why, this is a form of cultural appropriation, and a use of closed practices that are not meant to be done by non-Buddhists.

Its time that we really start making CDDs and general plurality more distinct. We need new terms, definitions, and concepts, ones that both communities can agree on. If pro endos are struggling to find the words, then we help them find those words. We don’t scream at them because of their differences, we encourage them to respect CDD systems and use the proper terminology.

And if you think it’s not possible then you are wrong. The community can exist without being ableist or misinformed about certain things. Just look at the Polymind community, they have similar concepts to non traumagenic plurality, but they don’t invade CDD spaces or are ableist towards CDD systems. It can be done, you just need to unlearn and relearn and rethink the choices and actions you make that could hurt CDD systems.

I have no problem with people digging into non traumagenic plurality and trying to make sense of how it even works. My problem is when you use it against CDD systems, steal our terms, and then act ableist towards us and call US the ableists or sysmeds for trying to defend our disorder.

This includes rebranding the origin terms. The term endogenic was created as an act of ableism. And having all origin names end so similarly makes it difficult to be distinct because it makes outsiders and singlets assume we are one community when we are not. They will assume that a traumagenic person is in the same community as a willowgenic person, simply because of how closely similar many of our origin terms are.

Non traumagenics need to be more distinct, because otherwise the impact you cause will unfortunately lead more and more medical professionals to not take CDDs seriously. It will lead to stigmatizing of both communities, which will lead more of us to just have no choice but to fight each other because we are told that thats the only option when it is clearly not.

Pro endos, endos, willows, tulpas, and other origins of non traumagenic plurality, DO BETTER. You have so many creative people, coiners, artists, nerds (/pos), people who are capable of inventing new ideas and terms that can improve your community. I have seen the coiner and artist blogs and they’re honestly great, you guys make up the bigger portion of the whole system side of the tumblr community. Your actions greatly impact CDDs because of how closely linked we are at the moment. Please don’t forget that.

I don’t like to hate on people or communities, I really don’t. I always prefer giving people the benefit of the doubt and second chances. I want you guys to do better.

If you need or want to use new terms, you can ask us on @amity-creates and we can help coin a new term for you. Or ask a pro endo blog if thats more comfortable for you.

As for our stance, we are and will mostly stay anti endo, but our blog is a safe space for everyone. If you see any of our old posts, don’t mind them, they’re our old opinions and whatnot, some of which we still hold to this day, we are just less ignorant about it. I highly doubt our stance will actually change anytime soon, especially since research is slow and there is still a lot that I highly disagree on that pro endos agree with, but we’re not going to be ignorant about it. Yes, we will start using the #endo safe tag from now on, except on posts where we are discussing anti endo views or specific CDD stuff.

Again, if this bothers you, then you can block us. Im not afraid of being harassed by radical anti endos anymore, I have the right to have my opinions, even if they are nuanced.

[umbraja]

Body Hair Positivity: Good or Gross?

It’s been a trend lately to embrace a more diverse image of beauty. Freckles and muffin tops, dark skin and curly hair, scars, tattoos, unusual proportions, crooked teeth, pretty much anything is supposed to be accepted under the banner of Body Positivity. 

But what about body hair?

And I’m not just talking about armpits or legs. I also mean unusual body hair. The kind people don’t talk about. The kind women aren’t “supposed” to have: chest hair, happy trails, beards, back hair. The kind that doctors call hirsutism and is often associated with hormonal imbalances from things like Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Cushing Syndrome, medication side effects, menopause, or even just genetics. It affects somewhere between 5%-10% of women depending on the region surveyed but may be higher as it can often go undiagnosed.

It’s not like we’re taught how healthy body hair should look.

Humans have been removing body hair since before recorded history. Archaeologists have found evidence of early humans using clam shells and shark teeth to remove body hair. Ancient Egyptians are well known for their full body waxes. Ancient Greeks considered it “uncivilized” for a woman to have pubic hair. Roman boys celebrated their entry into manhood with a mandatory first shave. And medieval European Ladies plucked daily to remove all hair from their brows, temples, and neck - some even plucked their eyelashes. The “New World” was no stranger to body hair removal either. Thomas Jefferson, and many others, wrote of some Native Americans’ depilatory obsession.

“With [Native Americans] it is disgraceful to be hairy on the body. They say it likens them to hogs. They therefore pluck the hair as fast as it appears.” - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

In the non-native US, body hair removal wasn’t really a big thing until the 20th century when we did a complete 180 on the subject. Before that Puritan values made sure that most body hair was covered by clothing so few bothered to remove it since no one was gonna see what was under all that cloth. Now recent studies say that 93 to 99 percent of American women regularly remove their body hair, making it one of our most widely practiced beauty norms. Girls as young as 10 are pressured into shaving, waxing, plucking, threading, anything to remove errant hairs as soon as they start to sprout. Refusal to do so leaves us open to bullying, both on the playground and in the office. Visible body hair can cost a woman jobs, promotions, and relationships so most of us remove it, no matter the cost. Which one study worked out to be more than $10,000 over the course of her life for the average American woman who shaves. If she waxes instead the bill goes over $23,000.

So what happened?

“Where eighteenth-century naturalists and explorers considered hair-free skin to be the strange obsession of indigenous peoples, Cold War-era commentators blithely described visible body hair on women as evidence of a filthy, ‘foreign’ lack of hygiene.” - Rebecca Herzig, Plucked, a History of Hair Removal

The driving forces behind hair removal in America are the same three that cause most of the nation’s problems: greed, sexism, and racism. Let’s go in chronological order. 

As the “Age of Enlightenment” began to secularize European politics, Imperialists needed a new excuse to justify their expansion into non-European territory. Naturalists like the still famous Charles Darwin handed them pseudoscience. It’s debatable whether or not these naturalists intended their work to be used as the foundation for white supremacist ideology that still plagues us today but there’s no question about how racists interpreted it. They saw evolution as a line that went from ape through colored people and ends at Aryan. Real science tells us that’s not at all correct and if anyone is closer to cave man it’s white people who often have Neanderthal in their DNA. But they didn’t have genetic sequencers back then so they used physical traits to “prove” it instead. Part of this was a gross mischaracterization that body hair could be used to determine a person’s place within the line of human evolution. They claimed people with coarse, dark hair were closer to apes and those with thin, light hair were more evolved. Guess who picked up on that concept in the 20th century.

Darwin further complicated matters in his attempt to explain why some white people were hairier than some indigenous populations by associating hairiness with evolutionary backsliding and mental illness.  

“[Hairiness in Europeans] is due to partial reversion; for characters which have been at some former period long inherited are always apt to return. We have seen that idiots are often very hairy, and they are apt to revert in other characters to a lower animal type.” - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

Other scientists and even medical experts of the time ran with this idea and before long the educated elite considered hairiness (along with other non-Aryan traits) to be a symptom of disease, insanity, and criminal violence. The uneducated masses were more familiar with freak show displays of unusually hairy people as “missing links” to our primate ancestors. Both cases considered having body hair to be a very bad thing. They’re also very bad science and not at all true.

Despite these very strong, racist feelings about body hair, it still wasn’t common for American women to remove it beyond the upper lip, neck, jaw, or between the eyebrows. Most women don’t have much hair there and those that did rarely had time or money to invest in removing it. Also they wouldn’t be caught dead admitting they had to so historical records might not be accurate about how many women actually plucked. For the first half of American history peach fuzz and other light hair was seen as normal and clothes covered the rest. But the 20th century not only saw women wearing less cloth and showing more skin it also saw them calling for gender equality. Critics of women’s liberation often accused suffragettes of sexual inversion - aka acting too much like men, which they saw as an abhorrent threat. To really drive this point home they often depicted women’s rights activists as being hairy, thus politicizing our pits. Pair this with the “hygiene” movement’s embrace of already mentioned racist views on body hair and you have a recipe for weaponized shame.

“Self-consciousness brings timidity, restrained action and awkwardness. The use of Del-a-tone relieves the mind from anxious watchfulness of movement.” - 1919 Del-a-tone depilatory advertisement

Enter Capitalism. Producers of hair removal products wanted to up sales so they did the exact same thing that was done with every other beauty product on the market - shame women into buying their stuff. It’s debatable if this was motivated purely by greed, in an attempt to reach an untapped market, or if the resulting gender oppression was intentional but men were spared of this aggressive shaming (until recently at least). Women, on the other hand, were flooded with advertisements for body hair removal products. From the first “razor for women” in 1915 to 21st century laser hair removal ads, women are constantly being reminded of our body hair. It doesn’t take a genius seeing ads that call smooth skin “attractive” or “sanitary” to extrapolate the opposite - that body hair is ugly, and dirty. A series of ads for Del-a-tone depilatory products even called it “necessary” for sleeveless fashion and suggests that not using their product will lead to social anxiety. Pair that with only ever using shaved models in all of fashion advertising and you send a pretty clear message: female body hair is something to be ashamed of. Advertising works. Now most American women actually feel gross if they’ve missed a shave, despite body hair being perfectly natural and not at all dirty. This disgust is so strong it has even bled over into an aversion toward male body hair which has seen a sharp decline in popularity since the shaggy chested disco days. Now men are being inundated with “manscaping” advertisements and expectations of manicured if not completely removed body hair.

So that’s the background but where’s this going?

While female body hair removal is firmly ingrained in western beauty standards, a new generation of women are rebelling against those ideals - body hair included. Recent studies have shown a shift in body hair trends among young women. Only 77% percent of women 16 to 24 reported regularly shaving their pits in 2016 and 85% shaved their legs, down from 95% and 92% respectively just two years prior. Since then we’ve started to see models, celebrities, and everyday women with unshaven pits and hairy legs. Body positivity campaigns have even gotten a few advertisers to include body hair in their ads. Now you can see razors actually shaving hair from women’s bodies instead of inexplicably running over baby smooth skin. 

Women have always told ourselves that hair removal is a choice but we’ve never before been encouraged to choose not doing it. Instead we’ve been brainwashed to think it’s dirty and disgusting and that no one will accept us for being hairy. Today’s young woman is actually presented with a choice, “to shave or not to shave” and a lot of them are choosing not to. Which is great news for people like me who have hirsutism and are sick of being shamed for how nature made us. 

But we’ve still got a very long way to go before I can be confident that my neck beard won’t hold me back both socially and professionally. A lot of the women who have publicly displayed body hair in recent years have come under attack by people calling them various shades of “gross” and some have even been sent death threats. It’s one thing for a rich and famous Hollywood movie star to take that kind of risk but for an autistic office worker living in a conservative backwater that’s a whole different game.

Whatever your thoughts and feelings on body hair, America still hasn’t escaped the shame of the last hundred years. Women are still very much judged for being hairy. A lot of people still think it’s gross. I’m not one of them but I’m full of unpopular opinions.

[disembodiedapparition]

Breaking The Pro-Life Argument Down:

I think it’s hilarious how right wing “facts don’t care about your feelings” activists are almost always pro-life. The argument against abortion as an accessible form of birth control is 100% an emotional appeal, and here’s why:

1. “You have no right to kill your fetus. It’s not your body, the baby is an individual and has the right to life.”:

Of course, all embryos are human individuals, separate from their mothers. They have their own unique DNA composition, and are definitely alive. But do they deserve the right to life, which would make abortion equivalent to murder?

Pro-lifers are largely okay with IVF, an industry that throws away and destroys millions of fertilized embryos every day. In-vitro fertilization is an uncertain science, so couples are advised to fertilize multiple eggs in the labs in case the first few don’t work out. If a couple succeeds and have extra embryos left, they have the option to continue paying to store them in the lab, donate them to medical research, or destroy them.

Anti-abortion bills always have exceptions for IVF clinics. Republican, pro-life lawmakers have literally had children via IVF. If a pro-lifer ever tells you that life begins at conception and that every embryo has the right to life, know that it’s bullshit. They don’t care about an industry that kills more embryos in a day than Planned Parenthood does in a year.

2. There are two possible responses to this.

A) “Fine, let’s ban IVF.” Out of all the conservative groups in America, only one major group explicitly stands against IVF – the Catholic Church. The same organization that condemns sex before marriage, homosexuality, divorce, masturbation/porn, the use of condoms, getting drunk or high, and tattoos. At this point, I’m assuming you understand that the Church’s ideas of morality are regressive, illogical, primitive, and… make life extremely boring. IVF is a wonderful science that brings children to parents who want them all over the world and is in no way a bad thing.

B) “Fine. Maybe not at conception, but at [x] months, it’s a baby.” This is the point where most conservatives start arguing about the point up till you should be allowed to have an abortion. Two weeks? Six weeks? Three months? Unfortunately, there is no scientific way to determine when an embryo is no longer just a clump of cells and now a human being with rights.

Since pro-lifers are okay with IVF, we can assume they don’t believe in the right to life at conception. How about the heartbeat theory? At six weeks, the fetus develops a heartbeat, and proponents argue that it is the point at which the fetus is no longer simply a fetus, but a human being. However, having a heartbeat doesn’t necessarily mean you have the right to life.

Legally, if you are brain dead, you’re… dead. You no longer have the right to life, which is why organ donation is possible. All this while having a heartbeat, so that’s clearly not a viable hallmark of an individual that inherently has the right to life. So while it’s true that at six weeks a baby develops (what is flimsily termed as) a heartbeat, that doesn’t somehow give it rights to life that it did not have before. So far, I haven’t come across any other sensible theories as to “when” an embryo deserves the right to life. It’s a lousy concept to begin with, as blurry as the legal definition of adulthood – not all 18+ year olds are mature and nothing fundamentally changes in a person once the clock strikes midnight. Similarly, embryo development is a process. There’s really no point at which you can logically claim it’s transformed into a human being with rights.

3. Evidently, there are two extremes — life begins at conception, vs life doesn’t begin until birth.

There’s no “scientific backing” for a point in between, but you’ll never find a pro-choice advocate arguing in favor of the latter, because it’s called an extreme for a reason. The best way to deal with the abortion issue at this point is to leave the science and technicalities alone, and think about the people who are actually getting abortions.

4. “Use protection and you won’t get pregnant”:

Protection is never 100% reliable. Plus: if two people are irresponsible enough to have unprotected sex, what makes you think they’re responsible enough to have and raise children? The number of children growing up with unqualified, immature, abusive, or neglectful parents automatically disproves the theory that parenthood beings about a sense of personal responsibility. Being raised by bad parents inflicts often irreparable damage on children. Treating babies as some sort of “divine punishment” for irresponsible sex, instead of human beings who deserve a stable upbringing, is harmful on both an individual and collective scale. The data on irresponsible, neglectful, or abusive childhoods/single parent childhoods speaks for itself. In the quest to punish irresponsible parents, most of the damage is inflicted on their children, which in turn impacts the generation that will lead us forward into the future. It is in our best interests to raise as many mature, healthy, and productive young adults as possible, and while not every child born into these circumstances live lives of mental health/psychological/intimacy issues and criminal behavior, a large majority do. Growing up with bad parents is simply not ideal for an impressionable child’s wellbeing. Quality of life > quantity of life.

5. “Don’t have sex if you don’t want to have children.”:

Unhelpful, unrealistic, and telling of no real desire to solve the problem at hand. People will have sex. What are we going to do to make sure the sex doesn’t lead to unplanned pregnancies?

6. “Okay but what about xyz who had an abortion and has regretted it ever since?”:

Abortion is a result of unplanned and unfortunate circumstances. Whether it’s because the doctor tells you your baby will be stillborn or born with a fatal illness, or if you were raped, or if you had sex with your boyfriend during your first year of college and found yourself pregnant: these are bad situations, and no matter what you do, there’s always a chance you’ll look back and wish you’d done things differently. Kept the baby? Well, maybe you’ll find that the baby brought newfound purpose to your life. But maybe the baby added an additional financial strain to your life and forced you to quit your job, leaving you destitute and homeless with no way to feed it. Alternatively, if you got an abortion, maybe you end up being able to finish college and fulfil all your goals… or maybe you regret that decision for the rest of your life. There’s no way to guarantee that you’re making the right decision, but being informed about your options, and having options available, makes it more likely that you do. That’s why we are advocating for informed choice. Whether they eventually choose to keep the baby or have an abortion, give women the time and resources to truly evaluate their options and do what’s best for them in their own circumstances.

7. “Why kill the baby? Put it up for adoption.”:

The adoption system is known for being isolating, exploitative, and unhealthy for children growing up in it. Being adopted into a great family can create healthy, happy young adults. But far too many kids don’t get that opportunity, and pay the price for it. In 2019, 122,216 children in the US adoption system were waiting to be adopted. Young people who age-out of the foster care system without being adopted are over-represented in rates of incarceration, suicide and substance abuse.

Granted, for some kids it’s a better alternative to the families they would have grew up in, but again: it’s an unideal situation. An unideal situation that can very easily be avoided with abortion. Why would a person choose 9 months of labor, plus all the emotional labor of having to give your child away to a system that more likely than not will eat them alive, knowing they will grow up asking themselves why they weren’t good enough for their birth parents, when the person could… simply not have that baby and not invite all that pain?

To summarize:

It is definitively not in anyone’s best interests to force unwilling and unprepared parents to have an unwanted child. It’s also not a good idea to get too deep into the technicalities of when an embryo is a fetus or when you’re allowed or not allowed to abort it. We need to focus on the women who are actually getting abortions. Having a baby is a huge life adjustment. Keep it, and you’re taking on an 18-year responsibility. You are responsible for another person’s wellbeing, and your life will never be the same.

In three months (about 12 weeks), a potential mother can: find out that they’re pregnant (missing periods is extremely common. A lot of women only find out they’re pregnant at two months, or 8 weeks), think about their financial, professional, social, romantic, or whatever situation and figure out what would be the best course of action, and then actually get the abortion if she chooses to. 12 weeks is enough, 12 weeks is reasonable, 12 weeks is humane. Nobody wants third-trimester abortions unless there are serious, life threatening complications.

The pro-life argument is reduced down to: well, abortion is bad! That’s a little innocent baby. It didn’t hurt anyone. Well, we agree: abortion is bad. It’s not a good thing, it’s not something people want to have to do. Nobody looks forward to giving or receiving an abortion, it’s physically painful and often heart-breaking. But is it as bad as forcing a woman to go through nine months of excruciating, potentially life-threatening labor for a child she doesn’t even want to have? Is it as bad as enforcing serious health, financial, emotional, social, and professional risks on a woman who knows she is in no way ready to give a baby the life it deserves? Is it worse than having to wake up every day with a heavy pit in your stomach because you can’t feed your little girl since you had to drop out of high school to take care of her? Worse than having to give your baby away to an adoption center, where they’re likely to join the hundreds of thousands of unadopted children? There are evils, and then there are greater evils. Abortion may not be ideal, but for some people, it’s the best option out there. When broken down, the pro-life argument is nothing but sad, provocative videos & descriptions of surgical abortions intended to pull at your heartstrings. But they’re sometimes the best option for the mother and her unborn baby. Nobody is pro-abortion — we’re pro-choice.

[rateclick4]

Fat Freezing Or Fat Loss? The Very Best In Body Contouring

Fat Freezing Or Fat Burning? The Most Effective In Body Contouring

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Do You Slim Down With Fat Freezing?

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Do You Drop Weight With Fat Freezing?

Please talk with among our specialists regarding your goals and also what you can anticipate from your therapy. The specialist works a sophisticated probe over the picked location, applying vacuum suction which produces a warm and afterwards a cold experience as the therapy works. Taking advantage of the power of low temperature levels, this treatment aims to assist contour bodies when utilized along with a healthy and balanced lifestyle. You may have only one troublesome location that may require just one treatment session. You may have greater than one issue location that may need therapy or might need more than one therapy in a specific location to achieve your wanted goal. You will deal with your doctor to make a plan-- as well as the variety of therapy sessions-- that will certainly best satisfy your wanted objectives. A rare problem in which the skin develops red, scratchy areas after exposure to cool temperature levels.

We can keep our rates extra affordable as we are a mobile facility and also do not have the economic worry of properties as well as all the cost that choose it. Once you are settled into your therapy you can chose to do whatever you like as long as you remain on the therapy bed. You can loosen up and read, carry out some service your phone and even chat to your specialist. Nonetheless, we suggest that you take this possibility to totally unwind, pay attention to some songs and also take a well deserved snooze. We can give you our word that this treatment actually does work and also has long lasting results. It is not a disadvantage or a slendering myth, this is a medically, attempted, examined and also shown treatment. No supplements or diet plan are needed for this type of therapy.

What Can Patients Anticipate During A Fat Freezing Therapy?

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Which is better CoolSculpting or Venus Freeze?

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There are a number of cryolipolysis gadgets offered, such as CoolSculpting, MOCOOL-A as well as 3d-lipo, which likewise utilise radiofrequency and ultrasound. Nonetheless, my experience exists with the CoolSculpting gadget so I will certainly be discussing this in more information. Below's whatever you need to find out about the procedure that's popular with stars such as Gemma Collins and Khloe Kardashian. ' Larger people often tend to lose more inches, yet we additionally have dimension 8 clients who just wish to remove two or 3 inches of persistent belly fat. The Federal government has come under hefty criticism for stopping working to control the cosmetic therapy sector. However within hours, the skin on Sarah's stomach went from feeling numb and also white with chilly to blisteringly hot as well as bright red. They claim results such as 50 percent of fat in the location being completely damaged in one session, with some clients seeing outcomes within 48 hours.

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[theshinobiway]

Hello there! Let me just start by saying I love the way you write. As someone who wants to publish one day, I find your style beautiful and inspiring. Now for my request, could you maybe write a scenario where Neji would end up falling for someone who is like his fanboy/fangirl? Kinda like the Sakura to his Sasuke if that makes sense. So sorry if it doesn't. Whether or not you choose to acknowledge this request, I hope you have a lovely day/night and please keep writing my fellow Neji lover ♥️

             Okay first off,

May or may not have gotten a little teary reading this. You have no idea how much hearing that actually inspires me to continue writing! I often look back at my own writing all the time and feel like it sounds pretentious or too try-hard-y but hearing that people actually find it beautiful is, well, incredibly touching and feels like awonderful accomplishment as a writer. I hope I can do your request justice!

On the prompt: This is actually a really sweet prompt that I’ve mused about before! I tried to keep the story as gender-neutral as possible since you specified both. I hope you don’t mind that I took some liberties with giving the reader some medical jutsu because it just flowed well with the story. Since my last two Neji prompts were a little heavy I tried to make this one fluffier, and I hope you enjoy it! Thank you for for contributing to the blog!

Also SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG, LIFE HAPPENED BUT HERE I AM AT LIKE 3AM LOCAL TIME FINISHING THIS, ENJOY A 13K FIC AS MY APOLOGY.

Request Scenario – Neji Falling for his Fanboy/Fangirl

Neji Hyuga - Who You Are

“He’s so cool!”

“Woah, that technique!”

“He’s obviously a genius.”

“That guy didn’t stand a chance.”

            A boy with long, brown hair stood over another, sprawled on the ground. His fist was at his fallen opponent’s face, perfectly still. As he rose from his completed match, you were in awe at how fluid every movement from him was—even out of combat. Still, what was the most cool was how his face didn’t contort in some ridiculous jeer or stupid grin. No, he was completely assured of his victory from the beginning, and his expression was disciplined, collected.

You were taken from the start.

[…]

           Neji never paid any mind to any of the girls and boys that fawned over him in your class, let alone you. In fact, he was rather snarky and aggressive when they overstepped his wide boundaries. But you made sure that you stood out in ways that mattered. You remembered his birthdays, his favorites, and made especially sure to mind his preferences when he was around you, intentionally never getting on his nerves, and especially never speaking on his behalf as the other ‘fans’ did.

           It didn’t take a genius to see that he hated people speaking for him. You stayed silent, letting him speak, and when he asked you about your portion of a group activity, you gave him straightforward answers—but with a smile, of course. You didn’t expect special treatment from him, you merely knew that keeping your professionalism in a school atmosphere was the right thing to do.

           You knew that he knew you liked him, you made it clear when he asked you outright one day and he sneered at your answer. He was harsh, slamming you with a rejection to the confession he had intentionally solicited from you. You weren’t perturbed. He was rude, but it was his way. You told him it was what it was, and that you hoped he wouldn’t treat you any differently because of the answer—after all, you had always liked him, but most importantly you had always acted as you meant to. Neji raised a brow, but the vaguely disgusted look didn’t leave his face. It hurt, a bit, knowing this was a clear rejection, but you weren’t dissuaded. You meant what you had said.

           You still gave him gifts for the occasions, but not out of the blue—he hated that, too. When Valentine’s Day came around, you especially made sure to never make him anything sweet, knowing he hated sweets. When all of the other gifts ended up in the trash when he left the academy that day, you noticed you didn’t see yours. When his birthday came around, you made sure you had taken note of some concept you noticed him looking for in the library and bought him a book accordingly. You didn’t mind that he threw most of the things people got him away, but you quietly noted that you saw your book in his slightly ajar bag some days after, or that when he sat eating lunch alone in some place the others couldn’t get to, the (healthy) granola bars you had made him seemed to have made their way into his lunch.

           But you didn’t say anything. Because you knew that when Neji liked something, it was clear enough. And when he didn’t, it was just as clear—the other ‘fans’ just didn’t want to accept that forcing their way on him wasn’t the way to treat him, let alone anyone. You never wanted to force Neji to be what he wasn’t.

And, while he would never have admitted it to your face as an academy student, it was what made you at least bearable to be around.

[…]

“Hyuga Neji, Rock Lee, Tenten.”

           Your heart sank a bit knowing you wouldn’t be on the same team as the one you admired. Still, you couldn’t be bitter: it was a good choice for the composition. The other ‘fans’ of the Hyuga weren’t as forgiving.

“Seriously? Her of all the kunoichi?”

“Such an eyesore.”

“Watch her get a big head after this…”

“She had better not interfere.”

“Look at that grin, what a sk-“

“Shut up!”

           You slammed your fists on the table, and immediately the room silenced. The instructor announcing the teams turned to look at you as well, caught off-guard. You knew you had everyone’s attention, which was exactly what you wanted. If there was one thing you couldn’t stand, it was that mob-mentality bullying you had grown so accustomed to with the other “fans” of Neji.

“Tenten was the best choice for his team! She’s the best weapons user that’s probably ever been through this academy, so she’s the perfect choice! You all know exactly how skilled she is, so shame on all of you for talking trash about her just because of your petty jealousy!!” You huffed in the direction of the dissenters, already knowing exactly whom had been speaking. They hadn’t changed from the same girls in all the years at the academy.

           You knew of all the other fans after all, and they had gotten to know you quite well, which is why you were mildly surprised they had dared say anything around you. You never leveled with just how petty they could be. ‘And frankly,’ you thought, ‘being a bully had nothing to do with admiration!’

           You turned your head to Tenten who was shocked but sent you a small smile of gratitude. You knew the girl had thick skin—another reason she was likely on his team—but words could hurt. You shot her a thumbs-up and brushed your shoulder at her, and Tenten gladly returned the gesture. ‘Just brush it off.’ Lowering yourself back to your seat. The presenter clearly had no idea what to do with the situation, so he cleared this throat tentatively before continuing.

“Al..right…Next team, Team Four: Hitomi Tanaka…”

            You focused your eyes confidently ahead, ignoring most of the dirty looks that had been sent your way, but occasionally returning the glare if you saw one out of the corner of your eye. Most of them immediately turned their heads away so you could focus again.

           The one glance you didn’t see was from the root of the problem in question, who raised his brow at you and narrowed his eyes. He studied you for a moment, scrutinizing your every move, looking for some self-serving purpose. When he couldn’t find any—and he had never been able to—the corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly before he turned his gaze ahead once more, lost in his own thoughts.

[…]

“(Y/n), You will be accompanying team Guy on this mission as the squad’s default medic-nin, providing additional aid and support where necessary.”

“Understood!” You chirped happily, letting your enthusiasm glow in full view. Tenten gave you a high five, glad that their first mission was with a familiar face—and you both trusted each other.

           It had been almost a year since your teams were assigned, and your abilities as a medic-nin had become more apparent with time. Because of this, you had been assigned to this mission to assist team Guy in their first solo venture without their sensei. It was a C-rank with a moderate chance for conflict, so you knew to be on your guard. But still, you had only seen Neji periodically since then—occasional joint training exercises with your own team, a mission or two with Tenten or Lee when Neji was occupied—you hadn’t had much time to get to talk to Neji, and you were excited at the chance to finally show him how much you had improved. Your admiration from him had hardly waned during the time of distance.

           This was to be your first mission with him, and you knew you were going to give it everything you had. You realized still that you wanted his approval more than anything.

[…]

“I want to help!”

“Then stay out of the way and do your job.” Neji’s voice cut deep, though you brushed off the pain. There was no worse feeling than the scorn of someone you admired so much.

“Just because I’m here as a medic-nin doesn’t mean I’m useless in combat!” you protested, but the glare from Neji the second you finished told you well enough to keep your mouth shut. He wasn’t going to budge, and you knew that much. If anything, he found it disrespectful that you were going against the squad leader’s—his—judgment call.

“You’re right, you’re not useless.” Neji’s voice perked you up. He was giving a compliment..? Suddenly you felt excited. This was what you always wanted. But, seeing his face filled with mockery, your expression fell immediately.

“You’re a burden. And, after this mission, I’ll consider myself lucky in that I will not see you again.” He turned on his heel, making his way to the front and in position, and your stomach dropped lower than it had probably ever been. Hearing those words from him almost made you want to cry. Tenten, who had seen the exchange from her position, gave you a pitying look from where she was. She symbolically brushed her shoulder at you.

‘Y/N, just brush it off. He’s just like that.’

           You shot her a half-hearted smile back and brushed your shoulder back in response, but his words were stuck replaying in your head. As you hid yourself, waiting for the encounter, you tried to gather as much courage as you could. This wasn’t the way you had always envisioned your first mission with your longtime crush. Maybe it was just you, but for some reason, Neji felt much colder than he had been even at the academy.

           As you heard the battle begin, you readied your weapon just in case. Then, when you heard Lee cry out, obviously injured, something within you lit like a torch and you couldn’t stay still. You never hid behind the scenes for your own teammates, let alone here in hostile territory. You had been preparing a new technique for months and you finally were confident in its use. Especially now. You heard unfamiliar footsteps thud towards you, the weight was too heavy to be a comrade. As you readied your technique, you were prepared to do your job the right way, even if it meant proving Neji wrong. For once, there were bigger things at stake than impressing your crush.

[…]

“I told you to stay put, and you disobeyed!” Neji raised his voice, something he never did. But despite your current victory, his pride appeared to be speaking on his behalf.

“I realize you gave an order. But given that it was a stupid order, I elected to ignore it!” The words fell out of your mouth before you could stop yourself. This was so uncharacteristic of you; going against the object of your affections, your squad leader, but as you worked tirelessly to heal Lee, halfway exhausted from the combat and the chakra exertions from your healing palm, you couldn’t keep your mouth shut. The irritation of what you knew could have been avoided was still currently draining precious chakra.

“You’re a medic-nin with no combat ability-“

“No combat ability?! I don’t think you know what that means, considering that my interference is the reason your comrades still have their organs intact and the mission didn’t carry on for another exhausting few days as we tracked them down again! Medic-Nin doesn’t mean walking-first-aid kit, Neji, it means I have a specialized skill set! And if your team—”

“If they failed their duties, then it’s not on you to interfere, it’s on-“

“YOU!” You finally raised your voice, barking back at Neji, who stood over you. His head jerked back and you saw the anger flash in his eyes, but you ceased your healing immediately to stand up and stare at him, eye-to-eye the best you could. Tenten pulled your shoulders back, trying desperately to deescalate the situation.

“You’re the squad leader, and for all the time I’ve ever spent admiring you in my whole life, you were absolutely the worst one I’ve ever seen! And, I’m not surprised after seeing the way you’ve talked to them this whole mission—and now me—it’s no wonder your teamwork is garbage! Who wants to work under someone like you?! Your pride comes before their well-being! I have no confidence in you as a leader to prioritize us, your teammates, and its clear your teammates are just as intimidated by you as they are the enemy!” You huffed, your fists balled and your knuckles turning white. “And you think that their failures are on them? No, you want to be the squad leader, you assume the responsibility—your team’s failures fall on you!”

           You saw Neji immediately move towards you and you felt the anger radiating off of him in waves. Tenten lurched forward in time to hold Neji back, separating the two of you, shouting at the both of you to calm down.

           The person you admired from the beginning, that anger that you saw in his eyes, the momentary snap of killing intent…was that really the person you admired for so long?

           The mission ended when you returned to the village, but Neji had given you the stern silent treatment ever since, and when you were dismissed from the assignment room, he had left without a word. You grimaced at the report he was likely to make about your insubordination, but Tenten gave you a knowing look.

“(Y/n), he isn’t the kind to be…that spiteful. If the mission was a success, he’ll want to focus on that. It was his first assignment as squad leader, after all…” You offered a small smile to Tenten and Lee, knowing they appreciated you sticking up for them.

“I hope so.. but in the future, you two… don’t let him talk to you like that anymore. He needs to learn to look after you all, too.”

“I think you’re right, (y/n). Don’t get me wrong, he’s actually better now still than he used to be, but…” Tenten looked off, exchanging looks with Lee, who nodded.

“Neji-san is improving day by day! My rival refuses to remain weak in any area, and so I know he’ll improve as a leader, too!” Lee gave you his trademark thumbs up and flash of teeth, and you giggled back.

“Well, even if I’m not on a team with you three from now on, I hope I’ll see you around!” Both nodded and you waved, bidding them goodbye on your way.

           As you walked home, though, the weight of your words bore down on you. You had never been that harsh with anyone in your life, let alone Neji, and you know there was a better way to handle it. You’d make things right. Because, after all, nothing ever would stop you from doing the right thing—not even Neji.

[…]

“We need to talk.”

           You weren’t the kind of person to let arguments set without resolution, so you had spent the better part of three weeks tracking him down and contemplating what to say. He was skilled at avoiding you—and you knew he was avoiding you, because that was just who he was—until you cornered him in a remote park.

“Leave.” His brows narrowed, teeth grit, and body tensed in agitation. He knew you had tried to find him, and he also knew how to avoid fans—he had been doing it for the better part of his life, anyhow. The only reason you caught up was because he had become sick of putting forth the effort to avoid you.

“You’re going to attack me? Since when were you ever a slave to any of your emotions, let alone anger?” You huffed, standing your ground. “You’re better than this. And I know you are. That’s why I’ve always admired you.”

           As you always seemed to, you caught him off-guard with your blunt confessions. Still, his steely-eyed approach didn’t waver. He let a small ‘hmph,’ obviously deeming you a non-threat, and returned to his cool demeanor.

“I’m not going to ask for forgiveness from you.”

“You don’t need to, I’ve forgiven you already whether you’re asking or not.” You crossed your arms, playfully returning his snark. Neji, after so many years, had weathered at least a little to your impenetrable wall of positivity.

“Oh? You’ve graciously forgiven me, I see?” Neji was sarcastic, but you knew him too well to pay it any mind.

“Yup, and you don’t have a choice about that. We all make bad calls, and I actually owe you an apology too.” Your demeanor softened as you finished until you paused meaningfully for a moment and sighed, letting your shoulders drop. You took a breath before making eye contact, letting him know you were serious. “You were under a lot of pressure for your first leadership mission, and I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I could have stated my concerns better. I’m not happy about the way I handled myself. Insubordination isn’t something to be proud of, either… I’m sorry, Neji.”

           Neji, despite you being the one apologizing, looked like you had punched him in the gut. You waved your hands at him, defensively.

“Hey hey, you know me. I’m not trying to be the better person here. You should know I say what I mean. I don’t care if you apologize officially or not, it’s water under the bridge now. I just want to make things right, whether we see each other in the future or not...though, hopefully...yes?”

           Neji shook his head, same expression on his face. There was a momentary silence between the two of you until he broke it.

“When I tell you to stay put, I mean it. I don’t take chances.” Neji looked off, monotone as always, hands on his hips. You quirked your brow at him, wondering if he had missed the point of all your protests on that mission. Until it hit you why he had commanded you to stay safe, and you blushed in realization.

           When Neji turned back to you, he caught your face a deep scarlet and was startled. He waved you off, grumbling about you taking it the wrong way. Still, you couldn’t help but giggle and followed him, hoping that this particular good mood would make him more agreeable to a proposal for lunch.

           It didn’t, but you were glad enough that you had made up with him. He coldly dismissed your offer and made his way off. Even then, he was sweet too… in his own way. He didn’t like you, but it seemed he wanted to assure your well-being, even if he could still cut you off at any time.

[…]

           When both Neji’s team and yours went through the Chunin exams a year and a half after you graduated, you were worried sick about…his predicament. Knowing what you did about the participants involved, you prayed he wouldn’t come to meet her during the exam.

           Your team had decided unanimously to go through, but the second exam was wreaking havoc on you. You lost your own scroll within the first day to a surprise assault, and now you had the task of finding not just one, but two scrolls. It seemed unlikely, until you noticed in the distance a team arguing over whether or not to open theirs preemptively. You caught the jump on them in their disoriented state right as they tried and your team’s well-timed ambush earned you an earth scroll and left them unaware. Not that you really had taken anything they wouldn’t have lost, anyway—there was a disqualification for breaking the rules of the exam.

           Still, you were worried you wouldn’t find the other scroll in time, and you definitely didn’t want to run into the team that stole yours again—you had barely escaped with your lives. By a stroke of luck, you ran into Neji’s team during the exam.

           They looked at you cautiously, but Neji was aware immediately that both teams held the same scroll, making a fight between the two of you pointless. That, and with Lee in a pitiful shape after his encounter with the sound-nin, your impulsive act of healing him—and disregarding conversation until you finished, you had a one-track mind on the matter—softened the situation. With Lee feeling better, you both drew up a temporary ally-ship. As a repayment for your medical services, Neji scouted two teams in the vicinity with heaven scrolls and you both planned out your assault. It was pointless to have two Konoha teams fight when allyship was far more lucrative.

           When you both finally made it to the tower with a day and a half to spare, you immediately learned that there were no on-duty medic-nin permitted to assist the passing participants. After having a few choice words with authority, you resolved to take care of both teams, using your chakra reserves carefully over the next few days to revitalize both your team—and Neji’s.

            When you finally got to Neji, he wasn’t as torn up as some of the team, though he did sustain a few nasty bruises from the second assault. The problem was that they were under his jacket…and his mesh armor.

“I-I need you to…” Gods, you couldn’t even say it. It was also fruitless to hold back your blush, but Neji narrowed his eyes at you.

“Work quickly, before the other teams catch on that we’re working together…and mind your manners.” He quickly unzipped the jacket and tugged off the armor as you stammered over something about ‘I just need to see the bruises to know what I’m dealing with’ and ‘what kind of person do you think I am?!’

           Now in full view of him, you couldn’t even bear to look. You took glances to see where the injuries were localized, but immediately averted your eyes when you began. Neji kept his gaze locked on you the whole time, and you weren’t sure if his stare was really meant as threatening as it came across. It was hard to process anything besides your chakra control. You’d never felt flustered about this sort of thing before, but he always made you notice these sorts of things, and right now it was simply embarrassing.

“Are you done?” His voice brought your attention back to reality. Neji glanced down, and you followed his line of sight. Your hand was solidly on his bicep, your healing quite finished. In your lost thoughts, you didn’t recognize you had stopped and your hand rested there…of its own accord, obviously.

           In all your training sessions for tactical withdrawal, you weren’t sure any of those recorded times came close to how fast you tore out of the room in that instant, yelping and stuttering a quick apology in your stupor towards the door. Neji, on the other hand, sat motionless on the bed, hands pulled into his lap, face solidified into a stern expression, and eyes locked on the door that slammed shut behind you as he waited for the slight tinge of color that had crept on his face to secede.

[…]

            The preliminary rounds were difficult, but you and another of your teammates managed to pull through the first round by the skin of your teeth. Your third wasn’t as lucky, and you made note to see him later, his injuries not so bad because he had surrendered in time. The rookie teams quickly made note of how you and team Guy knew each other, and at that point, the atmosphere between the leaf-nin was friendly enough to socialize comfortably. Lee was forming friendly, competitive bonds as well. It made sense, of course: even if this was an exam, you all fought for the same village.

           When Tenten’s round came, you were also shocked at how the sand-nin kunoichi quickly dealt with the girl you were barely on-par with. This filled you with a sense of dread for the upcoming fights. Still, you were concerned over your best friend, and took a small break to see her in the wing. When you came back, your eyes locked on the screen and your heart stopped.

           During the preliminary matches, your worst fears came true—Neji was to face his cousin from the main branch. And during, all the progress you had seen in him after the last year of working on his anger fell apart in those thirty minutes. You felt nothing but pity and sorrow for the girl trying her best, and you knew firsthand how words from Neji cut deep. She was just like you—she admired him, honestly, and you could feel the sense of loss from what once was a close sibling-like relationship.

           When Neji moved to kill her in the final act, you felt your legs jolt forward of their own accord before the Jounin were leagues ahead of you. When the orange-clad kid made an oath to get back at Neji, you were too lost in thought to process what was going on. You only hoped that if this kid would beat Neji—and you seriously doubted he would, because it was Neji—that some positive change would finally stick. Lee diplomatically handled the situation, telling the two to save it for the final matches, and you whispered words of praise for him when he returned to the balcony.

           Neji, on the other hand, caught immediately the look of abject disappointment on your face. Disappointment in him. But in true and prideful Neji fashion, he scoffed at you, deciding to ignore you for the rest of the rounds. You couldn’t read his eyes, but that was his intention after all.

           When Lee fell to the boy from the Sand, you experienced your second round of heartbreak that day. Once the matches concluded, you all but rushed to see him. He was being prepared for transport along with the other injured attendees to be transported out of the forest, but the medic-nin relayed his condition to you after you protested that you were his friend and a fellow medic-nin in training.

It wasn’t good.

           You leaned against the wall in the hallway, look of horror plastered over your face. You felt the tears begin to sting your eyes as the words from the medic in front of you passed over you and he left, the hall suddenly eerily quiet. You didn’t notice that someone had walked up to you and was speaking to you until a hand rose and snapped in front of your face.

           When you glanced over at Neji, jolted, his face impassive at your tear-stained cheeks.

“He’s not well, I take it?” The bite that was in Neji’s expression earlier was gone, but his voice held the same amount of emotion as always—none, perhaps with a hint of vague impatience.

           You managed to shake your head, tears threatening to spring anew. You hated having to be the one to break it to him, but today had been emotionally taxing. Your sorrow at Neji’s match was forgotten now, your attention focused on Lee.

“How bad?” He moved forward, but you caught his eye twitched as your expression worsened.

“He…his legs…they think they’re…” You couldn’t finish, your voice cracked, and you shook your head furiously, unable to say the words, the tears streaming down your face as you clutched your hands your face. You tried to regain your breath, to force the words out, but it wouldn’t come. You knew it was unprofessional, un-shinobi of you. But you couldn’t stop.

Neji also didn’t ask you to.

           You heard a sigh and a warm arm came around you, pulling you into a firm embrace. You almost gasped at the sudden contact, but your face was buried in his jacket. The part of you that always admired him would have been squealing with joy, but that wasn’t who you were right now. You clutched onto him for dear life, letting yourself cry and shake, Neji standing completely still to allow you to let it out.

“I’m going to make sure that kid from the sand knows…he’s made a terrible mistake.”

              That was enough for you to know. Neji was still the person you always admired. A year ago, he would never have moved on behalf of Lee. Now, Neji had his own resolve, one that didn’t take kindly to those who assaulted his precious teammates. You hadn’t seen the encounter in the forest with the sound-nin, but somehow you knew that had to have been similar to this fury…no, this was a deeper anger, one you felt as his fingertips unconsciously dug into you as he spoke. But Neji would need to be calculated for this match, because that Sand-nin, Gaara, had no qualms about killing. At all.

“Please.. be careful… that guy is…” You buried your face deeper into his jacket, unable to help the outpouring of your emotions, trying to pull yourself together. “Please, please be safe, Neji.”

“…I promise.”

[…]

            Neji had kept you busy during the month-long training period between the previous exams and the final. While you had your own match to prepare for, you both decided it would be best to train together along with Tenten. In addition, your opponent had been the particularly deadly nin that would have killed your teammate in the preliminaries had he not surrendered. This would be a difficult match.

           You weren’t completely sure, but you picked up a sense of urgency that Neji directed towards you during your training sessions. Neji was much stricter and harsher with his critique during your spars than previous session pre-exam, and he made sure to leave little room for error. You secretly hoped you wouldn’t need to face him in the final rounds, as both of you could already tell the inevitable outcome. If it weren’t for Tenten’s positive attitude, you might have been overwhelmed with how serious Neji was. He wasn’t going easy on either of you.

“How long were you neglecting your physical spars? You’re not going to heal the enemy to death. Get up.”

           After what seemed like the umpteenth time you had landed in the ground, your shoulders were crying out from the pain. Nevertheless, you groaned as you rolled over, drawing your elbows up under you in an attempt to push yourself up. One of your arms gave out midway and you tumbled back down, the side of your face hitting the ground as you winced.

“Is that all you’ve got?

“Ugh, I’m trying.”

“These exams have the fatality ban lifted, simply ‘trying’ is the last step before dying.”

           You cringed at the thought, admittingly not knowing what the outcome could be at this point either. Your opponent was able to secrete poison from his body in both a liquid-like substance as well as blowing poisonous gas from his mouth and nose. Close combat was pout of the question. Still, it didn’t hurt to be prepared.

“Neji, lighten up. (Y/N)’s team isn’t a taijutsu specialty like ours. They aren’t as focused on-“

“It doesn’t matter what their specialty is, Tenten.” Neji snapped back, startling the kunoichi. Despite being used to it, Neji’s calloused nature was never pleasant to experience.

“If you’re furious about something then we’re not the people to take it out on, Neji.” You snapped back on her behalf, finally regaining your balance on your feet.

“What did you say?”

“You’re taking something out on us! You never told us what happened when you returned to the compound aft-“

“Silence.” Neji’s voice had a dangerous uptick and something flashed behind his eyes that you really didn’t like. “My affairs are none of your concern, and….” His voice dropped multiple levels. “…clearly nothing did, or else you know I would not be standing here.” His voice dripped with acid, burning a painful hole in the conversation by the end. Both you and Tenten stood there awkwardly for a moment, exchanging glances.

“(Y/N) is…we’re just concerned, Neji.” Tenten covered for you, knowing where your heart was.

“If we’re going to sit here and talk about my feelings instead of train, then I’m off to be productive. Goodbye.” Neji scoffed, turning on his heel and made for a new training ground.

“Why do you walk away from everyone who cares about you?!” You blurted out suddenly, already regretting the decision, but also somehow possessed by the question that had been lingering in you for a long time.

           Normally, Neji never responded to taunts. And, he never needed to, he was far too self-assured. But this time, Neji’s feet halted immediately and his head snapped back at you in anger.

“Tenten, I need a moment.” You were still calm, giving Tenten a reassuring look before she acquiesced and left promptly, leaving you both alone for a time.

“Are you intent on getting on the very last nerve I possess? You clearly overestimate your importance, here. You’re a vapid and lovesick fan that had the sheer luck of being in proximity to me, but your healing was useful enough to keep you around. I was considerate enough to spar with you in exchange for your aid abilities, and now that I’ve shown a base amount of concern you decide to throw it back in my face?” Neji was immediately on the offensive, wasting no time once Tenten was out of sight. And oh, his words cut deep. The feeling of shame covered your face, knowing that was all he thought of you. He was the person you admired the most, and now he said everything he knew could hurt you.

“Of course I’m grateful, Neji, but it doesn’t mean I deserve to be treated like this. Tenten doesn’t deserve it, either. And I…I never asked you to care about me, so let’s get that straight!” You balled your fists and dared make eye contact with him, only a few feet away from you. “I’ve always admired you, I’ve always watched you succeed, and for good reason! You are a genius, and you know it! But even if I did, I’ve never asked anything of you that you shouldn’t have already done!”

Neji’s face gawked at you for a moment before blinking, thoroughly insulted. He must have imagined you were chastising him.

“No, you know you would never have gotten anything out of training with me, but yet you still…” You bit your lip. “You still asked me to come. Even if it’s just as shallow as not wanting me to die, that’s enough for me. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t! Have I ever asked? Have I ever demanded your attention, your time, or your concern?! I’m never going to do that, Neji! That’s not how I want to treat anyone, let alone someone I admire!” You breathed, still in disbelief that you were letting loose like this for the second time in your life. “You’ve always improved so far ahead of everyone, and now you care about your teammates and it shows, because I completely admire you as a leader, too. But this… it’s not painful because of the insults. I…we both could sit here and take it all day. Honestly, I think we’re just… too used to it by now.” You averted your eyes, Neji’s face deadlocked on yours, remaining unresponsive and silent, his brows narrowing.

“It hurts only because I’m seeing you suffer in silence. And it matters to me that you know you have people that want to look out for you…the same way you look out for all of us. I’m…we’re all not going to force you to open up, we just want to know how we can be there for you.” As you finished you noticed your voice growing weaker, the deadpan and harsh stare from Neji intimidating you. For a few moments, he was silent. He didn’t blink. And then, suddenly, he spoke.

“Get out of my sight.”

           You were shocked, the command so blunt as if he didn’t respond to anything you said. He wasn’t moving, but he expected you to. When you didn’t budge, still too overwhelmed in shock by his words, he stepped forward.

“Now.”

“No.” You said it, but you don’t know how in the world you managed, because when you did, Neji’s eyes widened in anger—the same sort of anger you saw during the exams, and you threw your hands up in front of you as though he were to attack. He didn’t move, but you saw his eyes flicker to your arms, and then you.

“I…you’re terrifying me right now, Neji…” Your voice shook, every fiber of your body telling you to get as far away from him as you could. Slowly, he advanced, posture straight, until he was uncomfortably close. You were deathly still, poised defensive.

           He suddenly leaned forward, and your foot flew out behind you, moving you further away. He did so once more, and you followed suit. Until you couldn’t move anymore, your back pressed against a tree, and his imposing figure with the darkest white eyes staring down at you, lips curled in a snarl. His looming figure blocked out the sunlight, casting a shadow over you.

“Where’s that bravery you had a few minutes ago, (y/n)?” His voice was soft, but no less menacing. In fact, the quiet inflection in his voice only heightened your sense of danger. You swallowed in reply, never taking your terrified eyes off of him. You felt hot, though not in the romantic sense you always anticipated when you daydreamed of him being as close as this. This was far more sinister.

“...It went with the person I admired.” 

          Mild shock painted his face, and suddenly he paused, the malice in his expression ebbing from his face.

“...You’ve been caught in a childish daydream for far too long.” He gave a subtle shake of his head, never letting his eyes leave you. “I’m not going to train with a child. You’re on your own after today. Whatever Tenten does after training with me is up to her.” He rose from his position, face eerily calm. He didn’t move away. Suddenly, you realized he wasn’t going to. Wanting nothing more than to be out of that situation, you slowly inched to the side and gave him a wide berth, hurrying out of the training area, leaving him as a lonesome figure in the field.

[…]

            You didn’t get a chance to speak with him until the exams, but you felt a sort of embarrassment as you stood near him in the lineup. The crowd had you feeling nervous, and the glare from your soon-to-be opponent was only succeeding in that you had already been feeling vulnerable even before you arrived. You had prepared something sufficient for him, but it was the following matches that had you concerned. Perhaps you would surrender when you could, after all.

           You were the second match following Neji and the one orange jumpsuit kid from the previous exam. It was likely to be a quick match, knowing the kid was a two-rate failure that would perform to expectations.

Oh, you were wrong.

           The match played out before your eyes in an unbelievable showdown. When Neji revealed his curse seal, you winced and clutched your hand over your heart from the combatant’s box. You had never seen it before but had heard of it in passing from Tenten and Lee. Hearing his past had all but wrenched your heart out, you never knew he suffered so much. This was the pain he had carried all his life.  the reminder of how you both had last spoken, the awe you always had of his impassible skill, and the fantastic fight put up by the boy called Naruto.

           All in the last few minutes of the match, when Neji had nearly been victorious…it all changed then. Naruto pulled a last-minute clever victory in an uproar, and Neji lay motionless on the ground. You found Tenten in the crowd who exchanged looks of shock with you, and she moved from her seat to go down to the medical wing. You couldn’t bear to do it yourself, though, and merely gave the Naruto a sideways glance as he returned to the competitor’s box.

Your own match was next.

           You had concern racing through your mind when you led yourself down to the field. You weren’t sure what the crowd thought of you—perhaps you were another filler match to them until their long-awaited Uchiha/Sand-nin match.

“You sure you ain’t giving up right now? If not I’m sure they offer shared rooms so you can see your friend…”

“Match Two, Begin.”

           When your eyes rose to meet him, the world didn’t matter. All that was ahead of you was a certain payback to one ninja that had bloodied your teammate.

“Yeah, now send my regards to both of yours.”

[…]

            The ambush came on suddenly from the stands, and your remaining teammate managed to awaken you just in time to see Neji and Tenten rush out of the area behind Hyuga elders, the sand and sound-nin in full assault upon the remaining jounin stationed in the arena. Knowing your techniques, though still in their novice stage, could mean the difference between life and death for those in the surrounding area, you took a stealthy approach, utilizing your scalpel technique from hidden corners of the arena.

            Your match had ended swiftly, the endurance training you had begun with Neji and continued with Tenten allowed you to counter your opponent’s close-range poison abilities. You were almost always out of range from his clouds of gas until you had lured him in close enough for a finishing blow. He began to laugh until you whipped around in the last moment and shoved a syringe into his artery.

           You had prepared an antidote to his poison—one you administered directly to him, and as the antidote flooded his veins his poisonous gases were neutralized. It was only a matter of time before his actual sub-par Taijutsu was overpowered by your swift movements and precise attacks with the Chakra Scalpel technique. You shoved yourself to the ground to lash out at his Achilles tendon, and rolled to avoid his weight as it came crashing down. Standing over his hunched form with your hand primed with another scalpel just out of reach of the vertebrae on his neck, the match was officially over.

           Now, the stray ninja that came after you shared the same fate. You worked to disable their mobility when you saw an opening, leaving the more experienced Jounin to finish them off.

           As soon as it had happened, it seemed that the ambush was over. Only a few hours had passed, but those that were caught surrendered, those that were against retreated. Knowing you still had one teammate in your sight with minimal injury and another in the rehab wing of the hospital—he had inhaled far too much poison had needed recurring checkups on his lungs—your thought wandered to Neji and Tenten, hoping they were safe. You didn’t have much time to think as soon you were ambushed by multiple shinobi needing your assistance.

           Even as a novice in the coming months, you were stretched thin by Konoha Crush’s aftermath. There were days without a break, and you dreamed of your bed often. On a few occasions, you had passed out from chakra exhaustion, only to stubbornly pick yourself up after a short period to gather what you could and continue. No one stopped you, knowing that your skillset was too valuable to protest.

           Tenten came by now and then, and you sighed in relief when she told you that Neji was safe and sound—in fact, things had been apparently better since the attack. She told you of their meeting in the medical wing and you smiled warmly, happy she had been there for him.

           She also mentioned that she heard of your match and had shared the story with Neji, and you burned red, nudging her in the side for putting you on the spot like that. She laughed in their characteristic way and let on that in her limited abilities to read of the Hyuga, she had never seen a look so close to ‘impressed’ cross his face as when he heard about it. Tenten gazed at you for a moment, acknowledging that even if he hadn’t come to see you since the exams, it was likely because he was embarrassed by his actions before. Not that he would admit it ever because it was Neji, but she advised that you should see him sometime.

           Though your schedule was full enough that in the coming months that any hope you had of seeing your longtime crush and admired one fell to the wayside. In the distance, though, one day in the marketplace as you tiredly picked out ingredients for dinner, pearl-colored eyes caught sight of you through the crowd of people, tracing your every movement and expression with relaxed lids that spoke guilt. As soon as they did, though, they seemed to be self-aware enough to force themselves away, retreating to a familiar road home.

[…]

           Sasuke had left the village, and Neji had been sent after. They were back now…in the hospital. This was the news that came to you as you returned your report to the desk.

           You had been gone on your own mission. Otherwise, Shikamaru later told you, he considered your medical abilities as a valuable backup for the team. You couldn’t rebuke Shikamaru, seeing the look of defeat that he was barely holding back. You comforted him the best you could, but you couldn’t stop the question that spilled from your lips.

“Where’s…Neji?” You looked at Shikamaru, hopeful, only to see the broken expression of the man who looked at you with nothing but guilt hanging from the corners of his eyes. He bit his lip, knowing you wouldn’t like his response.

“He’s…in critical care. They’ve been working on him for the last few hours.”

            Those words echoed like a shot through your heart, and you rushed off before Shikamaru could utter another word. The halls were a blur, your heart thrusting against your ribcage, threatening to make its way through your throat if upset further. You had been in the hospital many times before for supplemental training, and knew the intensive surgical room had a short observation deck above the area that was walled off with glass. It was utilized for students that sat in on procedures, but family members made their way above as well. This time, though, the area was barren and you held your breath.

‘Neji had a huge family, where were they? The room was still in use. Had they left already? Were they wrapping up the surgery? Had something gone wrong? Those rooms were only empty if it was done, or if..no, no, otherwise if they had…been led out…because of….’

            Your hand went up to stifle the gasp as you saw the extent of his injuries. The nin were still working, but there were two large perforations in his torso, clean punctures through. That he hadn’t bled out by now was a miracle.

            The seconds staring at his injuries were the longest of your life. Time would only resume as normal when a hand came upon your shoulder, and you saw the face of the new Hokage herself.

“Oh Good, I was wondering who I would need to assign to take care of this one when he leaves surgery.”

Tsunade let a sly grin slide onto her face, and at once your worries retreated back, though they hung off in the distance.

“Will he…?”

“Make a full recovery? You should know that these things are never a hundred percent certain.” Despite the partial warning, Tsunade didn’t retract her confident grin and chuckled. “…but it might raise a few percentage points or so if you keep an especially good eye on him after. I’ve heard you’re probably the only one who can, given how this one can get a bit of an attitude, right?”

          You sighed in relief, and you felt Tsunade pat your back as she returned to her duties.

“In the meantime, it’ll benefit you to keep watch over the procedure. You might be doing it yourself, one day.”

            When the surgery finally ended, you let out a breath that you may as well have held for the whole session. Tsunade had long since left, but you had been joined by Tenten, Lee, and your teammates. The observation room rejoiced, your cheers startling the doctors below for a moment until they smiled at the enthusiastic group above that had been waiting on their friend.

            You hardly left his bedside for the days following, gently tending to some of his care when the nurses were swamped with duties. Changing bandages was now second nature to you, as were the rotations. The others occasionally came by, but none of his family came.

            This went on for two days until a quiet presence made its way through the door. You had hardly slept, so you weren’t sure you had imagined it at first until a meek figure peeked out around the curtain. You recognized her immediately.

“Nii-san?”

“Not awake yet, but maybe your presence will do the trick.” You smiled at Hinata, knowing that her attendance meant they had indeed made reparations in the time since the exams.

           She stayed for a while, and you made small-talk. Hinata was a sweet, kind-hearted girl. She was bashful even in person, but soon your conversation fell to the wayside when Neji began to stir. You both silenced immediately and Hinata waved her hands at you in flustered urgency, and you checked for his vitals. As soon as he had begun moving, he stopped, slipping back into unconsciousness. This began to worry you. You gave Hinata what reassurance you could, but she was obviously shaken by the event.

“I told you he’d stir! Now you just need to come back until he wakes up all the way!” You flashed a grin at her and she managed a meek smile in response, nodding gently before bowing and excusing herself out of the room.

           You hoped she really would return, given that she was the only family to pay him a visit since.

           That night, you told the nurses about his activity and they put him on watch for the night, closely monitoring for any additional activity or abnormalities. You begged to stay until they finally relented, warning you not to let the hospital head find out about your presence outside of normal visiting hours—you weren’t immediate kin or his actual teammate, after all. Still, it meant another nurse could divert her attention to other patients for the evening, and for that she was grateful.

           You felt hopeful that evening, but as the night drew to its zenith and still no change in his condition, you began to get inside your own head. That lingering “what if…?” echoed louder than it had in the days before. You visibly shook your head, frustrated, planting your face in the bed near his arm as you leaned over in your chair, trying to focus on anything but your overwhelming anxiety about his condition. The prospect of losing him, though…wasn’t one you were sure an eternity could prepare you to grapple with. You had to keep hope.

           At some point, you must have dozed off into a feverish rest, your head still tilted onto the bed. As you dreamed, you felt as though you were walking with a heavy weight upon your head. You kept attempting to shake it off, to move around in every way you could, but it wouldn’t leave. It was almost as though you had a headache, and suddenly the weight began to bounce on top of your head. A constant pounding of an invisible force shook you in your dreamlike state, until you realized you were no longer in a dream.

“…(y/n).”

           Your groggy state let out a small groan as you attempted to move, your body stiff from being in an impractical position for so long.

“(y/n).”

That voice.

           You shot up immediately, stumbling a bit as your body had yet to catch up with your consciousness and your eyes shot straight for the brilliant opal eyes of Neji, peering through half-opened lids at you, his hand resting on yours.

           He was nearly feverish in this state, though he wasn’t flushed and you knew he had no temperature. Coming out of a coma was always a slow process, not a dramatic event that stories always made it seem. It dawned on you that the thumping had been his hand, still with limited mobility, trying to get your attention.

           You cursed yourself that this of all times had to be the moment you fell asleep, and you quickly got to work with checking his vitals and going through routine questions. You had to repeat many of your questions and keep them as simple as possible—he still seemed to be in a state of semi-consciousness—and checking for any discomfort, pain, or sign of undetected ailments. Neji slowly answered and his voice grew stronger as you went along, until he was finally able to ask one of his own.

“Where…How long..?”

“Four days total since your mission. Well, if you include tonight.” You were testing his collarbone, noting how he winced at the lightest touch. Pulling loose the gown’s shirt for a better view, the area was still closed but had an ugly, dark bruise that extended from just below his collar, over past the top of his shoulder, and midway through his upper chest. You compared the length of the bruising around his shoulder to the measurements took previous. It was slow, but they appeared to be decreasing in size and lightening in color.

“Please tell me you didn’t stay…this whole time.” Neji swallowed dryly, flicking his eyes from your hands that examined his bruising and back to your face that was concentrated on your routines.

“I can’t lie very well, you know that.” You smiled at him, gently checking for his pulse and scanning the monitors for his brainwave activity. It was slow, but that was normal. Satisfied that he was in no more pain than expected, you poured him a small glass of water, doubling back over your shoulder to check his painkiller levels, and sat next to him. He needed some faint assistance raising his head to drink, but you kept your motions as gentle as possible. His hand reached up to cover yours as it gripped the glass, but you weren’t confident he could hold it just yet.

           He groaned in pain, letting his head fall back on the bed in partial exhaustion. It was almost ironic how tired he was given that he had essentially slept for four days. Without thinking, you caressed the messy hair out of his face, and Neji, in his half-awake state, leaned into your touch, closing his eyes. Your face flushed instantly as you froze. With a confidence you didn’t know you possessed, you leaned forward to kiss his forehead and Neji blinked, looking back up at you with an expression you couldn’t read.

“I’m…just glad you’re safe. I didn’t know what to do when I found out, and…just…” You babbled, not even sure of what you were going to say, while he gazed back up at you, your thumb running over his cheek for a brief moment before you caught yourself and turned away, trying hard to contain the heavy feeling behind your eyes that attempted to spill out. You retracted, rubbing your face, taking a deep inhale before a weak hand covered yours as it rested on the bed.

“(y/n)…Thank you.”

[…]

           Neji was a little stubborn when it came to medical care, only insofar as Guy’s teachings made him habitually push himself beyond his limits. While the hole in his chest and abdomen had closed, the soreness from those areas was ever present. One thing many did not understand about healing jutsu wasn’t that it was an instant cure unless you were someone like Tsunade. It was a forced regrowth of cells, and those cells were delicate until they took time to completely weave together. The deeper the wound, the longer it took for the cells to settle. It was as if you had only placed tightly-woven mesh made from thin fibers over the wound. The fragile new skin could reopen and tear if not cared for properly.

“You need to take care of yourself! For being a genius, you’re so…just…ugh, wreckless sometimes!” You finished tying the bandage on his shoulder around the same time you finished your lecture.

           You weren’t really mad—and he knew, judging by your pouting face as you hurried your care of his arm—but you were very serious about him being careful. You caught a small smile from him as he sat in silence, letting you complete your work, admiring how talented you had become. As you got up and turned to put your things away, you heard him chuckle for a moment before he let out a small sigh.

“I’m not sure there’s anyone in this world that will care for me as you do.”

You paused at his words, your brows raising in confusion. “What do you mean by that?”

“What do you think?”

           That statement had so many interpretations and all of them were just as ‘Neji’ as the last; you couldn’t figure where to begin. You turned away for a brief moment, your face contorting in many comical expressions of confusion as you sputtered out syllables in an attempt to fathom some reply. It wasn’t working, you needed to know more. You turned to question him, but his back was to you, silhouette suddenly much further than you remembered as he left without so much as a glance back. “Whe- Hey! Neji!” But despite your attempts, he was gone before you had even finished.

           You clenched your fists and pouted. There he was again, leaving without even letting you respond. For being in recovery, he sure knew how to make a swift exit.

“Hey! Seriously! Quit walking off when you make statements like that!”

[…]

            As soon as Sasuke left the village, it seemed not long after Naruto had as well. The village was relatively quiet for the next years, and once Neji recovered you made sure to not let your schedule get in the way of seeing him again.

            He always seemed to play off your insistence at coming to see him, but you could tell by the way he didn’t protest he actively enjoyed your presence. One rare occasion you had to cancel training plans on him for a mission, you could have sworn his ensuing silence was actually his form of pouting, if Neji were ever capable of such a reaction. When you tested the waters and asked to reschedule for your return, he agreed far too quickly. This surprised you, and you teased him about it, much to his chagrin as he resorted to ‘stern and silent’ once more.

             He had been more open in the last years, and you spent hours--made hours--to dwell in long conversation that became as natural as breathing. You didn’t know Neji could be so talkative, but while deep in a meaningful exchange you always were in awe at the thoughtfulness that came from him. Though you had grown up a bit, that admiration from you never completely subsided. 

             Neji also had brought new, more personal topics on his own accord with you when appropriate. Sometimes they caught you off guard, though you were incredibly attentive to him. In fact, sometime after he had recovered from the mission and knew that you weren’t obligated to stay around, he caught your attention with a strange request.

“Can we speak after training today?”

“I…ah…sure, is there something on your mind?” You tilted your head, now swimming with ideas about what it could be. The inner part of you was dancing with joy, shouting ‘Confession! Confession! Confession!’ but your clearly rational side rebuffed that idea as best it could, knowing that while Neji was occasionally considerate towards you, you didn’t get the ‘crush’ vibe from him. Then again, Neji was someone who knew how to hide secrets from you.

“Yes, you could say that. It’s a conversation far overdue.” He nodded courteously and you scrutinized every motion he made, trying to get a sense for what it was. No indicator of a confession. As he was back on the field and his focus diverted, you tilted your mouth to the side, crossing your arms and thinking as hard as you could.

            By the end of training, you were ready to sprint a mile to run off the energy that had built from your anticipation. Leave it to Neji to make you impatient. As the others left, you stood around awkwardly, pretending to be occupied so they wouldn’t hang around too long out of suspicion. When you felt a familiar presence behind you, your heart kicked into overdrive as you spun around, nervous and fidgety.

“Are you alright?”

“Y-Yes! I’m fine! I just, uh…I just have no idea what it is!” You held your arms behind you and bouned on your heel for a moment, chastising yourself and telling you to focus. Neji eyed you in mild interest before he took a breath.

“I owe you an apology.”

            Your movements stilled and you observed his features. He was straightforward as ever, his hands balled into fists, and his voice only speaking words he meant.

“You know you’ve never owed me anything.” You smiled at him, tilting your head. This was endearing and uplifting all at once. He really had changed for the better thanks to that fateful match, and you saw the progress before you. He had been gentler, his quick anger replaced with a serene maturity. Neji gazed at you for a moment before briefly closing his eyes to think as he returned his honest gaze to you.

“You’ve always said that, but I wonder…if you really know what support like yours is worth. What it meant…even if I don’t owe you anything, you deserve to be treated accordingly. Being the way that I was, saying those calloused things to you, knowing I didn’t truly mean them and I was lashing out, I was unfair to you. And you’ve always been patient with—” You held your finger up to your lips with a soft smile, and he silenced midsentence.

“You’ve changed for the better in such a short time, and believe me, I can tell in your actions that you mean every word and gesture. I don’t dwell on the past. Knowing you’re trying to change from the person that you were then…is enough of an apology for me. I forgive you, and…I want to see more of that person.”

           You were beaming at him. Neji’s cheeks dusted the fainted shade of pink, betraying his forcefully placid expression. It was always so adorable to see him hold back when his feelings were strong. It was the rarest sight, but you committed every moment like this to memory.

“You know, Neji…my admiration of you still grows every day.” You confessed honestly, enjoying the fact that the shade on his face became slightly more prominent.

“What do you mean by that…?!” He nearly stuttered; something Neji never does, and your smile grew wider as you gracefully footed your way around him, making your way for the town.

“What do you think?” You teased as you called back in the distance, Neji startled and frozen at once as you disappeared off.

“Cheeky…” He grumbled with a tsk, moving ever so hurriedly—but calmly—after you.

[…]

            It was nearly two years since the exams and you had spent your time building your strength, training, fulfilling missions, and if you were lucky, shadowing Tsunade when she allowed. You weren’t her formal student, but you took after Shizune, finding your strength in poisons and antidotes. Your skills had followed as well, shaping you into a much stronger shinobi than you once were, giving you a modest reputation.

            The second wave of Chunin exams came and went, resulting in Neji’s promotion to Jounin and your own promotion to Chunin. When he told you, you couldn’t help but erupt in a bubbly cheer of joy and congratulations, throwing your arms around him and giving him an impulsive kiss on the cheek. Neji was never more flustered in his life, resembling Hinata more so than his usual self. He immediately went rigid and halted responding for a few moments after you broke away from your half-second action, and you waved your hand in front of his face to be sure he was still breathing. This all earned you a stern lecture when he maintained his composure, though as you grinned your way through it you could tell that his heart wasn’t really in it.

            News of Naruto’s return and the Kazekage’s kidnapping hit the village all at once, and you were concerned when you realized Neji’s team had been called after the S-rank assailants. You bit your lip when he bid you goodbye, placing a reassuring hand on your shoulder before he went to meet his team. He was older now, and his face was well-defined with gentle angles that your eyes loved to trace, leading back to his beautiful, iridescent eyes. You couldn’t look at him right now though, only grumbling as you fidgeted with your medical pack.

“If you scare me again like that Sasuke mission, I swear…” You meant to warn him seriously, but the hope and confidence you always had in him won out over your fears.

            A soft hand suddenly thumbed over your cheek and under your eye, giving you a gentle but unexpected reassurance. Your eyes met and you blushed. Neji was never openly…like this. And you both weren’t…you know.

“I’m coming back. On my feet, this time. I promise.” His hand left your face as soon as it had reached for it, and Neji blinked, the softest of smiles on his face.

You crossed your arms, pouting, but relenting.

“If you don’t and you break your promise, know that I know the most efficient poisons to keep you alive but moderately uncomfortable.” You huffed; your threat not serious in the slightest.

Neji chuckled, turning on his heel and bidding you goodbye, and so you began the long days of wait for his return, your heart slowly disappearing in the distance.

[…]

           You settled next to him on the engawa, taking in for a moment the gracious view of his silhouette against the wooden walls and backdrop of the gardens, and the gentle, meditative look on his face. You made sure to leave an ample space between the two of you, not wanting to press on his boundaries, but no sooner had you sat down, he turned his head towards you. His eyes motioned you closer—how did he always do that with just a glace?—and you complied, containing your enthusiasm, scooting slightly closer to him before settling completely.

          Neji observed you for a moment, and you could feel his eyes tracing out the contours of your face. You blushed a bit as you always did under his observation, and he let a soft smile. He secretly enjoyed that he could make you react this way.

          You looked to a recent bandage on his shoulder, revealed only by the sleeveless kimono top he was wearing. You sat down almost reflexively to adjust it, keeping your eyes focused on rewrapping the cloth. ‘For all of his genius,’ you smiled to yourself, ‘he’s only somewhat proficient at appropriately wrapping injuries.’

          Still, what weighed on the two of you was the news of the impending war that was coming. Squad assignments were being given, and very soon you would be in the fight for your lives. It made it difficult to enjoy the quiet moments like these, knowing that this would be a distant memory when you were on the battlefield. You were both tense. And for each of you, concern painted every move you made with one another.

“The war seems to be coming, soon.” You shifted the silence to calm conversation, knowing it was best to speak sincerely from the start. Neji lowered his eyes, the small smile on his face in gratitude that starting the hard conversations was always your strong suit.

“It seems that way.” Neji didn’t seem dismissive, though. On the other hand, his tone told you he received and reflected your own concerns.

“I’m… worried.” You confessed.

“I’m sure, war is never a joyous occasion.”

“No, I mean…I’m worried. For you.”

           Neji blinked, seemingly lost in contemplation at your words.

“You always are, aren’t you?” It was less a question and more of a statement of realization, one that seemed to echo deeper within him.

           The air was still, save for the soft fluttering of wings as two birds settled on the branch in front of you, letting forth the occasional chirp to remind you of their presence. Neji was reminded, too. Of a question that had hung in his heart for a long time, one he had always been afraid to ask. Was it fear, of the answer, though? Or fear that the answer could change everything?

           Now, it was perhaps the only time to ask. He had to know.

“….Why have you always cared this much for me?”

           You blinked once, wondering if you had imagined him saying it. When you turned your head to look at Neji, he wasn’t looking at you. His brow was furrowed and his gaze downcast, he seemed lost in thought. You put your hands down from the newly wrapped bandage, settling them on your lap as you blinked once, twice at him.

“Because… it’s you.”

“…That’s it?” He turned and blinked at you in surprise, his face turning to slight confusion, moving each syllable over his tongue as if he was more unsure with each word. “You’ve always cared because I’m…me?”

           You couldn’t help but smile. It almost sounded like a shallow answer given your history, but as you reflected on it, it was succinct, simple, and honest.

“It’s all the reason I’ve ever needed.”  You shyly looked away, keeping your head turned towards him. “I don’t think any honest affections for someone are solely based on what they do for you. I’ve never wanted, never needed anything from you. It was never about cost, or return, because those are woefully capricious and complicated things. This feeling is simple and constant. It is as it has always been.”

           Your eyes returned to his, absorbed in yours, while the smile on your face grew of its own accord. “And you, just as you are, have always been enough for me.”

           There wasn’t a word to describe the emotions that passed through his eyes, though his outer face was still. As if of their own accord and without his knowledge, the corners of his mouth twitched, curling up as he couldn’t hold back the soft joy that grew in his chest. Returning to his upright position and painfully aware of the slight tinge of pink on his own face, he returned his gaze forward and away from your searching eyes to avoid further embarrassment. His furthest knee drew up and he rested his elbow upon it, burying the lower half of his face in his palm. Though when he heard your quiet giggle, you saw a small smile return to his face and his eyes temporarily flickered towards yours before returning ahead.

“What about you, then?” You slid a little closer to him, thoroughly enjoying his bashful repose. And he knew it too, from the way you saw him sternly (but not seriously) quirk a brow at you. He lifted his head from where it had been covered by the hand.

“What do you mean?”

“When…?” You pouted a bit, halfway expecting his responding silence. You knew better than to force him to espouse his feelings before he was ready. “I never knew you cared this way…until recently. After the last time we had this chance alone. But it’s no wonder I was drawn to you, you’ve always been admirable in every sense. But I have to ask…with you, why…me?” You leaned forward, but he didn’t move, didn’t avert his gaze ahead. With a few moments of lingering stillness after your response, you turned your head forward in resignation, letting it be.

           At least, you thought, you would enjoy the serenity of the garden with him, knowing that what had happened minutes before—the lack of rejection—was a confirmation in itself. The only sound came from the two birds you had seen earlier, both sitting upon the same branch, seemingly having a conversation of their own, a song shared between the two of them. You were almost in a meditative state until his unexpected answer broke through the silence.

“You’ve only ever been who you were.” You turned once more to him, giving him your full attention. His answer wasn’t what you expected, either, though it sounded similar to yours. He was oddly reminiscent about an answer that should have been in the present, until you realized that it all went further back than you knew. 

“…Regardless of my actions towards you. And for my younger self, that was surely no small feat of strength.” He sighed, the tinge of guilt hanging in the air.

“Still, our world as shinobi is cold, and yet the warmth from you was constant. We are required to be cruel, but to me, you were ever kind. We must lie, but you’re forever honest with me…even when I was wrong. We must rescind all of our attachments, but you…refused to let me feel alone…” His voice trailed off, the last few words barely audible. His words were carefully chosen—as expected of the composed Hyuga. He gazed at the sky for a moment, lost in his thoughts, searching for those last words that echoed once, twice, so many times through all the memories of your past together.

“It is as you said. It’s always been just you, as you were. How could I…have fallen for anyone but you?”

           A fluttering of wings took part of your response, as the two birds previously nestled in the tree in front of you took flight. In tandem, they soared. You heard this, but only part of it. As soon as your eyes locked once more, time spun forward, weaving you both finally as one.

           In an action that Neji would later recount as perhaps uncharacteristic for him, he gently, tentatively, leaned down to place a chaste and unsure kiss upon your lips, lingering hesitantly to feel your response. As you pressed back, you felt a small hum or gasp—somewhere between—as if he didn’t expect that the person who had loved him all this time would wholeheartedly return it. No matter how new it was for both of you, the passion was ever apparent in the warmth of your lips that entwined deeper still, one hand lacing with his. Gentle movements of his thumb sweeping over your cheek and caused your heart to resound firmly in your chest as you clutched onto his shirt with your other.

           It was surreal, feeling your lips move together in tentative caresses, letting the passions of the moment take precedence over the need for perfection. The motions of the kiss grew deeper in a turn that surprised both of you, and you felt his cheeks hot against yours. Both of you were embarrassed, but this felt so right, and clumsy as it was the closeness that you both desired but now finally had was intoxicating. His lips were soft and better than any of the hazy daydreams that you remembered from when you were young. As he drew away, his eyelashes barely covering his lidded eyes, you found yourself longing for them the moment they left.

           Not content to let him leave, you pressed your nose against his in an affectionate gesture before he went too far. He flinched at the contact, but such was Neji and not the feelings he held. He leaned forward once more, resting his forehead against yours, enjoying your warm presence, taking a second to inhale and catch his breath from the romantic exchange. At some point his other arm came around you to press you flush against him. His motions were so slow and subtle you hadn’t realized he moved until you where there, in an embrace that felt heavenly.

“This close is really…” You mused, enjoying the contact along with the new opportunity to poke fun at the all-too-serious man that held your heart.

           Of course, Neji was more likely to assume you meant otherwise and he pursed his lips in shock, relinquishing all contact immediately before you caught him, throwing both arms around his torso and snuggling up to his shoulder. He let out a small sound of surprise, his arms drawn halfway up in the air. “I’m teasing!” His eye twitched again before he chuckled at the genuinely adorable reaction from you, finally relaxing and resting his arms around you once more.

“You’re going to be the death of me.” He sighed, complaint as genuine as his half-hearted attempt at agitation. You winked and grinned at him. Neji merely hummed in reply, his hand gently caressing your back as his head rested on yours. You were the only part of the world that existed to him then, and it was all he longed for. It was a moment he knew he would never forget, finally letting himself truly feel the warmth of the one who had always been by his side.

[serenagaywaterford]

Thank you so much for answering.. I wish I could give you a hug. The truth is this woman loves me and cares about me, but would never be in love with me, you know? I know you are going to think I am damaged after telling you this, but she was my prof. in high-school and helped me through tough times. She is a good person. My parents hate her cos we used to meet in secret and talk about their divorce. They say she gossiped about it, but she denies that. I have No idea who is telling the truth.

And you know, I tried so hard to get over her these years and I failed. And I am probably wrong, but in my mind, the fact that I still love her like that shows that She is the one, the love of my life. And I am religious too, and that does not help with the guilt at all. I am grateful for your message. Thank you for taking the time to write to me, I feel like you get me and you make this less lonely and painful, so thank you. You are the best and your loved ones are super lucky to have you. xx

—

Oh, bb. I wish I could hug you and sit you down next to me and help you through this cos I hate to say this but all of this raises so many red flags. There is so much to be wary of here, just for your own well-being and happiness. 

She cares and loves you as an adult loves a child, and hopefully that is all. She has no romantic interest and she never will. I am no psychologist but I think what’s happened here is something akin to transference. It happens a lot in therapy, where the client develops misplaced romantic attachment to the therapist because they’ve been open and vulnerable and the therapist is a confidant and cares. It also is common in schools, to the point that teachers are directly taught about it and attachment with children [x]. I don’t think you’re damaged at all, as it is a fairly common occurrence, but I do think you were missing something in your other relationships and you latched onto this woman because she cared, and was kind, and you felt safe. That is not a bad thing to feel cared for and you’re not wrong for seeking it. We all need that.

However, that developed into misplaced romantic love on your part (I’m unclear if it’s also sexual, and it’s not my place to ask. I don’t even know your age so let’s just leave that whole area alone). Children falling in love/infatuation with teachers is nothing new. It doesn’t mean you’re broken, but just something is misfiring somewhere and it hasn’t been addressed. 

I really need you to recognise you were a child when the infatuation began. You may seem and feel like you’re an adult, even at 17, but you’re not. Especially not compared to a teacher – who is not only in a position of authority over you, but also has huge power imbalances in other ways. Student-teacher boundaries are always a debate (like this one), but I think most people generally know where they fall:

“Being too familiar with one’s students can (and often does) lead to the blurring of lines in terms of teacher-student boundaries. According to Joe Jamieson, Professional Affairs Co-ordinator at the Ontario College of Teachers, a teacher is always at risk of developing dual relationships with his/her students. Dual relationships cause confusion in terms of a teacher’s role, not only for the student but for the teacher as well, as it fosters such phenomena as transference and counter-transference. 

Transference: when a teacher allows for an inappropriate relationship to develop with a student because the student perceives the teacher as something other than a teacher.

Jamieson illustrates this occurrence with a succinct and effective example:If a teacher is aware that a student from a one-parent family is struggling to connect with a mother figure, it would be inappropriate for the teacher to begin to take on that role in the student’s life, even though the student may be transferring that role to the teacher.

Counter-transference: If the teacher responds to the transference of the student (for example begins to parent the pupil in question) allowing for inappropriate behaviours and role associations to develop, counter-transference is then in play as the teacher has subscribed to the transference of the student and participates in the transferred role.

If left unchecked, it could develop into the teacher making lunches for the student, scheduling and attending medical appointments or lead to intimate conversations and/or intimate encounters.”

Not to mention the fact she is straight, much older, and married. Even if you’re 25 now, whatever pathways were built back then have just been reinforced over and over until now you think she’s the love of your life.

She’s not. She can’t be. Please, please understand she can’t be.

What is worrisome is that she continues this relationship with you, even years later. Does she know about your feelings? If so, I would really question why an adult woman feels compelled to continue fostering such harmful delusions in somebody she claims to care about. That isn’t love or care. There is something wrong with her if she knows about your feelings and yet continues on as if there is no problem. This is a problem. As an adult, she should be the one encouraging you to find people you own age to bond with, she should be slowly disconnecting herself from you for your sake. If she isn’t, there is something super sketchy with her and it’s definitely not healthy for you.

Now…

Things like “we used to meet in secret” are really disturbing to read. There is literally no reason a teacher meeting with a student, even for personal emotional support should be a secret. I have confided in teachers as well, and never has it felt like “a secret”. I mean, that is essentially precisely what guidance counsellors are for in schools. It is perfectly legal and okay for an adult to offer guidance and support to a student who is struggling, even with home issues. But concepts such as “meeting in secret” mean that some line is being crossed that shouldn’t be. The very reason boundaries exist in student/teacher relationships is precisely to avoid the sort of thing you are currently experiencing. As adults, it is a teacher’s responsibility to maintain a certain distance from students and not allow children to become too attached, especially in such a destructive and unhealthy way as this woman has allowed.

She is a bad teacher. I know you probably don’t want to hear anything negative about her, and anything I say will be met with skepticism and denial. I know. I’ve been there. We never want to hear those things about the people we think we love, and that we believe love us. But, hun, it has happened a million times before and it’ll happen another million times. You’re not broken or stupid or anything bad for feeling this but you do need to disconnect from this woman for your own sake. Even if you are in love with her. Even if she loves you. You must sever those ties, immediately. 

If it is meant to be, a few years down the road maybe something will put you two in each other’s orbits again–AS FRIENDS. But right now you’re incredibly vulnerable and she is a borderline predator.

I will say I am entirely biased because I think it is absolutely impossible for a teacher and student to have a healthy, equal relationship. Ever. Even an ex-student and ex-teacher. It’s romanticised a lot in fiction but it is really damaging and really toxic in reality. There are NO circumstances ever where an adult in a position of authority and respect should be fostering romantic delusions or ignoring the obvious transference in a child–for whatever strange reason they may have. (I can’t comment on why this straight, married woman has taken such an interest in you but I have a few ideas. Some are fairly innocuous for the most part, some are sinister, and the fact is there is literally no way to tell which it is. All I know for certain is that it is not healthy, for either of you.)

Whether or not she did gossip about your parent’s divorce is pretty irrelevant, to be honest. Chances are she did, because adults talk amongst each other, especially married couples. But you will really never know how gossip spreads cos anybody can do it. I would guess your parents are pissed off about that, but there’s more to it. I think that is merely the reason they gave you cos it’s easiest, and they thought it would work to convince you she’s bad. I don’t know your parents but if they even have an inkling about what’s going on between you two, I think they’re scared for you. (But I’d suspect their own issues are preventing them from talking to you about it directly, honestly, calmly, and without judgement against you.)

“the fact that I still love her like that shows that She is the one, the love of my life.“

BB, I mean this in the kindest way possible: you are wrong about this. I think deep down you know this too, and that’s why you have doubts and you’re miserable about it. She is NOT the one. She will not be the love of your life. (IMO, there is no such thing as the ONE. There may only be one but there may be many, all just as important and wonderful, in different ways.) Love requires two people invested in it to be truly real, it’s reciprocal. Because true love is a back-and-forth, it’s sharing of trust and passion and affection and commitment. From the sounds of this, you’re missing 2, probably 3–if not all of these. 

The One for you will love you back, in more than just a “teacher” or even friend sort of way. I know it’s been very difficult all these years because not only did this begin when you were incredibly emotionally vulnerable and immature, but the constant reinforcement over the years has made your brain believe things that just aren’t true. You’ve conditioned yourself to believe this. This was transference, that turned into a schoolgirl crush (we all get them!), that was then unhealthily (intentionally or not) encouraged by an adult.And I don’t know how much of an active role she’s played in this too. It worries me if she does know your feelings and yet continues. It worries me even moreso that this involved “secret meetings” because that is very, very wrong for a teacher to do. In any other context, this would be considered grooming. In fact, I’m not convinced it’s not grooming, of some sort. Even if she’s never done anything sexual and has no sexual interest, this ticks off a lot of the boxes for grooming children. Again, though, without knowing all the details, it’s hard to tell for sure.

In the simplest case, it’s transference of some sort. Worst case, this woman is a predator. Either way, it’s toxic and harmful to you as a person, especially someone who is lonely and unhappy and already living in a way that forces you to hide your true self. You deserve to be happy and this is not the path to it.

I’m just going to paste this here:

“As teachers, our students put us in a position of trust, and sometimes misdirected transference can occur. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to paint ourselves as ordinary humans, our students may project qualities on us that may or may not be true. Some students may even place us on a pedestal. While this can happen with regular, local teachers, it is even more likely to happen with well-known ones.

There are good reasons that professionals such as doctors, psychiatrists and professors practice within ethical restraints regarding relationships with clients. The relationship between a person in a position of authority and the person over whom they have authority is not an even one. The power differential between teacher and student gives teachers greater influence and persuasive power over students, and can cause students to trust a teacher’s motives and actions implicitly whether or not such trust is deserved.

When a famous, charismatic teacher singles out a student, that student is likely to feel special and perhaps further advanced along the path than her peers. It feels good to be singled out, so in order to maintain this elevated position, a student may feel that she must follow whatever instructions or practices the teacher prescribes. In addition, inherent in practice is the idea that in order to find freedom, one must surrender to the practice and to the teachings—and sometimes, to the teacher. The student may feel—or be made to feel—that setting boundaries will hinder her growth. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the teacher to set healthy boundaries.

On the teacher’s side, admiration and praise feel good. We all want to know that we are inspiring and uplifting our students’ lives in some way. When a community of admiring students reaches worldwide proportions, it becomes easy for the teacher to inflate his/her sense of importance. Fame does not have to distort our understanding of ourselves. There are many world-renowned teachers who have remained humble in the face of fame. But when it does, an inflated sense of importance can make it easier to rationalize unskillful, even harmful, behavior.” [x]

A bit more here.

Yes, this is about yoga but it’s applicable to elsewhere. It is not your fault at all that you’ve been swept up in all this. You were a child, in an emotional and vulnerable time of your life, and whilst she may have thought she was helping at first, she should have known better. She never should have let it get this far. It’s 100% on her, not you. You may not be a child anymore, and it’s been years since this all went down but it’s been reinforced over and over, until it seems like your world has tunnelled down to only her who knows you. The world is so much bigger than her and you deserve to see all of it.

I really don’t like telling people they are victims, so I won’t. I’ll just say that you need to look out for yourself first and that means disconnecting from her to find yourself. Letting go of someone you love can be the hardest thing ever. And it will be awful for a while. But sometimes it’s necessary.

I hope you feel open talking to others, even online, besides her about your feelings. I really feel you need to move away from her and find others who share your experiences, especially of being lesbian in a conservative family/town. You are not alone. There are 100s of women to talk to who aren’t your straight, old, married teacher. So many of us have struggled with similar issues and we are all here for you to speak with.

Please don’t feel that this married teacher is the only person who will ever understand you and the only person you’ll ever feel that deep connection towards. There will be others, I promise you. That new person may just pop out of nowhere, like mine did, when you don’t even expect it at all.

As a note: There is nothing wrong with seeking advice and comfort from older women, by the way. I often have and do. There is nothing wrong with friendships with them either. I also don’t think kids cannot have adult mentors or friends. There’s not a problem with friendships with straight, older, married women. As long as the boundaries are clear. You do need friends and lovers that are your own age, even if they seem hard to find.

I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to take away your only love, or anything. I just don’t think this is ever going to end up anywhere good for you. And in the long run, it’s just going to hurt you far more than whatever comforts you are finding in it right now. It concerns me that you’ve almost built your whole life/idea of romance around this singular woman that will never love you back the way you need and deserve, and who may, possibly, be a predator of some sort. You need friends and support, but not from her. She can be an acquaintance perhaps but you need to connect with people your own age and who aren’t married and are gay/lesbian/bi, especially in conservative communities.

I am always here to vent at, and there are so many other girls and women on this site who are compassionate and patient and kind, who probably have even better insights than I do. I’m sure some of them have experienced similar situations as you have. Just remember, you’re not alone, you’re not unlovable, you deserve better than what you’ve allowed yourself, you can be happy, and you’re not bad or wrong. You’re just struggling right now but eventually you won’t have to anymore and it’ll be the best thing ever when you get there. I know you will. xx

[lowcarbnutrients]

How to Design Your Ideal Diet

Choosing a diet regimen for on your own can be enjoyable, yet also overwhelming. There more than 100 various nutritional theories out there today, as well as it can be hard for us to choose which one is the excellent diet plan for us and our families.

Last year when I started culinary nourishment college, my initial project was to develop my very own written food ideology. Since I had my own wellness training practice for 5 years, I currently had a fairly strong understanding of my food philosophy or where I stood when it pertains to food. But I desired to dig much deeper and also actually discover what that suggested for me as well as my family.

Finding My Ideal Diet

Over the training course of my recovery journey, my food philosophy has actually evolved. I struggled with weight problems, high cholesterol, allergic reactions, autoimmune disease and regular illnesses. In the start, I was concentrated on dropping weight and also sensation better - having more energy.

I eliminated very processed as well as packaged foods having high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils and also preservatives. In the 1980's and also 1990's, I ate a whole lot of fat-free and health foods. I promptly tossed those foods out and changed them with full-fat versions. I started including even more vegetables as well.

As I began to reduce weight as well as obtain more power, I discovered myself in the kitchen extra and also started to enjoy the procedure of cooking and also creating brand-new recipes for my family. Quickly, I began seeing farmer's markets and also started finding out about neighborhood farming techniques. I made brand-new buddies with farmers and also manufacturers and also truly began to comprehend the intricacies of sustainable farming methods. This is when I actually began to move my idea system. I developed connections with farmers, market suppliers, beekeepers, herbalists, kombucha manufacturers, as well as generate farmers. These new relationships strengthened my understanding of our food economy, just how the federal government is so associated with our food and also how we absolutely can produce change with our getting behaviors. Supporting these folks came to be a lifestyle. I recognized my food, the individuals that grew it as well as exactly how it was being processed.

Currently, all of my meat, eggs, raw honey, herbal medicinal teas and also create originated from local ranches. I do supplement some fruit, veggies and snack foods from a neighborhood grocery shop though. These connections allowed my youngsters to have a better understanding of where our food comes from. These see the delighted cows, skip about with the piglets, and chase after chickens on the ranch near our residence. It produces an enjoyable, family outing.

Why is this important to do? I personally feel as a society we have actually relocated so much past a connection with our food. We're consuming supper at the drive-thru, snacks that come in plans and boxes rather than whole foods and also we turn a blind eye to the wrongs of traditional animal feeding operations.

Some might believe that I may be or must be a vegetarian provided what I recognize, however my body hungers for meat - not a lot, but some. So, I select to source locally-raised, pastured animals fed their natural diet of grass (and bugs for the chickens). I believe that everyone is different as well as we each have specific organic dietary needs. We must each establish a suitable diet that works for our individual bodies. Nonetheless, I do think that every person might gain from consuming entire, unrefined foods, small amounts of grass-fed meats if essential, natural fruit and vegetables and assistance local farming while doing so.

How To Design Your Ideal Diet

With every one of the nutritional concepts to choose from, do not really feel urged to pick one and proclaim to the globe how you eat. That's your business and also no one else's. You can determine if you really feel good eating meat or fish or if a vegan diet regimen is ideal for you. Or, maybe you intend to mix it up, like I do, and eat vegetarian one day and also fish the next - I call that the "flexitarian diet regimen."

But just how do we actually place this into method? Right here are some points to think about when you start to create your optimal diet.

1. Establish your own Food Philosophy

This important initial step overviews your choice making when it involves food. Here's mine:

My Personal Food Philosophy: Consume S. L. O. W.( Lasting. Regional. Organic. Wild.) My motto for the last 5 years has actually been to pick foods that are sourced ethically as well as sustainably. I attempt to choose regional whenever I can and also sustain my farmer close friends that live nearby. I choose Organic as long as feasible to avoid the "refined" things as well as often go "Wild" - for instance, I will certainly forage for wild herbs and also plants as well as pick wild over farmed seafood. And also, it's simply a suggestion to "consume gradually," or mindfully, which is terrific for digestion.

In addition to what I have actually reviewed above, a few of things you might intend to consider in your ideology are:

What you like to eat

Where your food comes from

What you 'd want a person to prepare you for dinner

How you make food decisions at the supermarket or market

What's your dream meal?

2. Consider what is locally available

We all enjoy avocados and bananas, however, for a number of us worldwide these foods aren't local. I'm not claiming you need to never ever consume them - nonetheless, it's vital to likewise consider what foods are plentiful in your location, as well as likewise what's in period. Neighborhood foods contain even more nutrients than those that were chosen weeks back and delivered throughout the country.

In an excellent world, your perfect diet plan would concentrate on what you have accessibility to. This allows us to support regional organisations and farms, minimize our environmental influence and consume food that is best - which is mosting likely to be wonderful for our health!

3. What are your activity levels?

Consider exactly how active you are. If you're educating on a daily basis, your nutrient demands are mosting likely to be greater than a person that has a desk task and isn't working out numerous times a week. On days when you're a lot more energetic, you might need a lot more healthy protein to fuel your muscular tissues as well as on days when you're operating at a desk you might require to eat a simpler dish like a salad with a healthy fat to keep your brain operating ideally. You may require extra protein, water and electrolytes if you're exercising consistently.

4. What is your health situation?

If you're suffering from an autoimmune illness, an inflammatory problem or fighting an illness, your diet plan will certainly require to reflect these problems. Those with autoimmune condition need to stay clear of inflammatory foods, like gluten, dairy products, sugar as well as possibly nightshades (you can grab a total Anti-Inflammatory Diet plan + Way Of Life Guide right here).

Conversely, if you have a household history of disease and also wish to stop disease, you need a diet regimen high in superfoods, anti-oxidants, fermented foods and plant-rich meals.

5. Market Factors (age, gender, etc.)

Typically, males need more healthy protein as well as facility carbohydrates than women. They also have various micronutrient requirements. Ladies and also men need particular nutrients at each stage of life, so take into account where you remain in life and also what your micronutrient requirements are at this time around and as you age.

Children will additionally require diverse nutrients at various phases of development to guarantee their mind and bodies prepare to grow and learn.

6. Your Lifestyle

One of the biggest aspects is just how your ideal diet regimen will certainly fit in with your way of living. If you're balancing a permanent career, domesticity, spiritual or school functions and pastimes that keep you hectic night and day, then you need to identify how to carry over your food viewpoint into your lifestyle.

Perhaps you don't appreciate food preparation or don't have much time to invest in the cooking area. You might need to study very easy supper hacks, begin a cooking cooperative or locate food shipment companies that align with your food choices to assist you meet your goals. You might have to shift your priorities to straighten with your new way of life. For instance, if I recognize I have an active week in advance, I meal strategy, shop and also batch prep a few dishes on the weekend break when I have a lot more time.

7. Dietary Preferences

You'll also wish to consider in your allergic reactions, sensitivities as well as general foods that you do not like. Some people do well on carbs as well as others do not. Take down just how you feel and start to make the link between food, your mood and also power levels after you eat.

8. The Research

Nutrition research is among those locations that will certainly never ever, ever before be settled. We're discovering more and also a lot more about nourishment scientific research each day. But you need to take care where that science is originating from and that is paying for the studies. Many medical professionals make use of "prejudice" to make their factors - meaning they will cherry-pick analytical information to prove their point. You'll find thousands of researches stating that veganism is ideal or Paleo is the method to go, or everybody needs to be consuming a raw food diet plan. Research your diet plan extensively from various sources to obtain an all-around factor of view.

9. Trial and Error

Don' t be terrified to make mistakes along the method. I once tried to eat raw foods for a week as well as had such stomach troubles that I was miserable. Be open to attempting new foods as well as diet plans, yet keep in mind to be in tune with your body and just how you feel.

Choosing a suitable diet plan is an evolving procedure, yet it's a pleasurable one too. Remember, if your perfect diet isn't sustainable - implying something you can do for the remainder of your life - after that it will not function for you. Attempt to create a plan or method of consuming that benefits your body as well as your lifestyle.

[alexjenniferabeille]

Comparative Analysis Essay 10/8/19

They’re Not Lazy

We all get lazy sometimes. There’s often things we’d rather just not do, usually in favor of doing something else, but sometimes in favor of doing nothing at all. Teens especially get flak for their laziness, which makes sense as they’re growing into themselves and learning to process responsibility while managing burgeoning interests in all kinds of activities. But what happens when you regularly call out a child’s incessant laziness, and you’re wrong? You can only make such a judgement based on what you see and what you know; and what you see is a child not cleaning their room, not doing their homework, not completing chores despite multiple reminders and sometimes even threats of punishment, and what you know is that that behavior corresponds to laziness. It’s beyond time to expand that knowledge. There exists a set of medical symptoms that has its own name, separate from the disorders it may be a part of, called Executive Dysfunction. Executive Dysfunction is not something you will typically be diagnosed with; instead, it is an under-discussed piece of the puzzle of many discrete mental illnesses that too often are overlooked, especially in young people. Tragically, when you call someone with Executive Dysfunction lazy with enough regularity, it can cause internalized self-loathing, decreased self-esteem, further motivation issues, and overall increases the negativity in their lives. It’s unhealthy, unintentionally abusive, and deserves to be addressed. Because while laziness and Executive Dysfunction produce similar observable effects in one’s life—namely “lazy behaviors”—they differ significantly in terms of where the behaviors come from, how one responds to the accusation of laziness, and the means of correcting the behaviors. When these differences are successfully understood, the knowledge can allow us to protect our most vulnerable from the psychological damage that frequently comes with this misattribution of laziness.

Laziness is first and foremost a decision, one we frequently make subconsciously. Not often do we sit down on the couch with the intention to be lazy, but four episodes of Brooklyn 99 later and you’re really not feeling like getting up to make dinner anymore, so you order in instead. Simply put, laziness is an avoidance of responsibility. Whether it’s because you’d rather watch a show than go for a walk, rather enjoy the company of friends instead of cleaning, or you’d rather just plain not go to the DMV, it’s all due to choosing one thing over another, more responsible thing. Laziness is, in fact, a perfect example of what proper Executive Functioning looks like. Every healthy brain has what is called Executive Function; the ability to prioritize, begin, carry out, and finish tasks correctly is fundamental to modern life. However, there are many cases where this mental process is damaged, and these cases are considered as a group to be Executive Functioning disorders. Disorders like Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism Spectrum Condition, Clinical Depression, Bipolar Disorder, and many others have the capacity to undermine the brain’s Executive Functioning abilities. This appears in a great variety of ways, but for the most part it is observably similar to laziness. It impacts everyone to different degrees, and is not something anyone has control over, much as society would like us to believe the opposite.

Control is the basic, or perhaps even only building block of human behavior, or so we are led to believe. We are fed this myth by the world around us; traditional media and social media both are frequently used to characterize poor behavior, including lazy behavior, as a personal failing. If someone seems lazy, our society says, they merely aren’t controlling their behaviors well enough. They’re just not trying hard enough. As such, it is hard for many to grasp the concept that what we do is influenced by much more than just the individual decisions we make. People with Executive Dysfunction cannot overcome their deficits by sheer force of will. And unfortunately, for many, desperately trying to can feel physically and emotionally painful. When you consider a child who will not clean their room, the typical parental response is some form of discipline. For children who are merely lazy, the threat of discipline is frequently enough to get them going, to various degrees of success (children are, of course, far more complicated than the scope of this discussion is able to address). When the child is struggling with Executive Dysfunction, even the threat of discipline may not be able to unlock their ability to clean. Their brain is struggling with some part of the process—they may not be able to start cleaning of their own volition. If they can manage to start, they may struggle to stay on task. If the clutter becomes overwhelming (sensory overwhelm is a common symptom of many Executive Functioning disorders), perhaps they have difficulty navigating where to start, or in what order to clean, and subsequently shut down from frustration. For children who persistently struggle to clean their room, parents may be tempted to call the children themselves “lazy” as opposed to their behaviors. For children who are lazy, this may be a wake up call to their behavior. For children with Executive Dysfunction, this is a judgement on their character. They cannot do the task, for reasons they struggle to understand, and will internalize this characterization. Frequently, parents call these children lazy time and time again, and become frustrated with their inabilities, presuming it to be a matter of lack of control. If only their child would just try harder, if only they would just get their homework and housework done. This characterization of their struggling child shapes how the child perceives themself, and frequently leads to low self-esteem, self-loathing, and can contribute to the formation of depression, and even physical or emotional self harm. Typically, we can identify when a child is genuinely struggling with performing activities by genuinely listening to them, as Executive Dysfunction frequently causes emotional distress due to its universal impact. A person with Executive Dysfunction struggles with tasks they want to do just as much as tasks they don’t. It can be just as difficult to get up and get a snack you desperately want as it can be to do a chore (a notable exception may exist for some children with ADHD or Autism. Their Executive Dysfunction may be influenced by their interest-based nervous system).

When we listen to our youth and hear their concerns, and with an understanding that Executive Dysfunction exists, we can, as a society, begin to make changes in how we should address their lazy behaviors. Drawing on the lazy child not cleaning their room example from before, it’s often enough to use a disciplinary approach, tailored to the personality of the child. Even with a difficult child who has an attitude, it would be a matter of approach (that may even include counseling!) to get them to overcome their laziness. But when the child is suffering emotionally, discipline will serve only to make matters worse. A child who may have an Executive Functioning disorder needs very different resources, and even if a parent is not sure that this is the case, they should involve their pediatrician or look into finding a child psychologist. There are a myriad of options to aid the struggling child. Medication, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and working with the children themselves to find suitable accommodations are just a few. To use myself as an example (I have professionally diagnosed ADHD), I often find having a friend or family member in the room with me while I clean is enough to keep me on task and helps when I feel overwhelmed by clutter. Even something as simple as kindly being asked if I’ve begun to do a task can suddenly make the task feel possible. I also take medication that allows me to focus and prioritize successfully, among many other social and cognitive benefits. What had never worked, and still doesn’t work, is being shamed when I fail to overcome my own brain’s incapabilities.

We should not live in a world where “don’t shame your child,” and “listen when your child says they’re struggling” are potentially radical suggestions. As a member of a community full of late-diagnosed adults, however, I’ve seen far too many people discuss at length the kind of treatment they received from their parents (and frequently other authority figures) as children and how much damage it did to them. As a late-diagnosed adult myself, I am still disentangling my internalized shame. Calling your children lazy, shaming them for what they may genuinely have no control over, instead of leading with empathy and avoiding name-calling and blaming, does real, long-term damage that may persist throughout the rest of their life. Executive Dysfunction exists, and no matter how similar the inaction may seem, it is not laziness. Parents, stop calling your children lazy. Listen to their concerns, and if necessary, seek help. Signed, every late-diagnosed adult with Executive Dysfunction.

[ixellent]

I stopped watching Boku no Hero a long time ago but I did watch up until (spoilers) Toshinori quits being a hero because he’s too disabled to continue and has pushed his body way beyond any healthy limit because he wanted to spare everyone else, or because no one else thought they could do it, or simply because they asked him to save the day. I was like “good” and stepped away from the series not long after lol because literally they just kept making Deku’s plot like “hey, destroy your body some more to be ‘stronger’". Toshinori was great disabled rep but not in the way that makes abled people think about their ableism. It felt cool to have a good guy be so scarred up again (like Vash in Trigun!) One series I thought had an interesting concept of “pushing through” was Darker than Black, in which powers (like super speed, hydrokinesis, matter manipulation, etc etc) often have bizarre and seemingly random "payments” for using them, like feeling compelled to eat boiled eggs, earmark pages in books, dislocate your own fingers, arrange pebbles in lines, lick someone, etc. In order to use the power, you ultimately had to pay that price afterward, no matter how bizarre or traumatizing. It felt more thoughtful and sensitive about risk and energy being things we don’t necessarily choose. Plus it’s interesting to see compulsions shown in a way that’s not necessarily villainous, dysfunctional, or negative on the whole, but rather as something that some people just have. In Eureka Seven (which is like if Evangelion was turned inside out in a good way), when characters push through mental or physical anguish or suffering, it is powerful but destructive and unhealthy, whereas care, love, and acceptance is healing and truly powerful above all. One of my favorite shows of all time. When they have teenagers and adults being like “I took a step back and took care of myself so I could learn to communicate with and better love the people I care about, so my robot is super sick and powerful now” I felt that. idk! most anime is real bad about this, it’s true!

Maybe hot take but

The glorification of "pushing through extreme pain and injury" specifically in like literally every anime I have ever watched is super fucking ableist. Extra ableism points if there's also a "only the strong should survive" mindset. I'm pretty fucking sick of it.

[meditativeyoga]

Why Many Are Now Drawn To Holistic Healing

Learn why holistic recovery is becoming an increasingly popular choice to western medicine.

Joanne Perron, M.D., spent five years practicing medicine in a busy OB/GYN workplace, where the individuals rotated with as if on a production line-- in and also out in 10 mins. 'I was exhausted,' she remembers by phone from her home in Monterey, The golden state. 'By the end of the day, I really felt disconnected and also emphasized. Eventually, I got extremely aggravated as well as disillusioned and also started to ask myself, 'Is that there is?"

Perron needed to encounter that she wasn't the therapist she had actually laid out to end up being. 'Traditional medication is like a religion,' she claims. 'You get indoctrinated at an early age, and afterwards often you begin to doubt your idea system. You begin to ask, 'Why?'-- or, more crucial, 'Why not?"

The doubting began as she realized that the points conventional medication had educated her didn't often treat her people. As well as several of those patients came back to inform her they would certainly gotten much better after attempting different therapies-- for instance, botanical treatments for menopausal symptoms, Chinese natural herbs for uterine bleeding, or acupuncture for discomfort. In Georgia, where she was after that exercising medicine, petition is typically employed in order to help healing as well. 'I really felt there was a void in my expertise. My people were pursuing points I understood absolutely nothing around,' she claims. 'I had discovered all that I could, but I recognized I required to discover more.' Perron reduced her hrs at the workplace as well as began taking yoga classes, in time, she signed up in a 200-hour yoga educator accreditation program.

Perron's patients belong to the expanding group of Americans transforming toward complementary and also natural medicine to cure their ills and enhance their lifestyle. A national survey launched last Might by the National Facility for Complementary and Natural medicine (NCCAM) and the National Center for Health Stats found that 36 percent of UNITED STATE adults utilize corresponding and natural medicine. That number jumps to 62 percent when prayer made use of specifically for health factors is consisted of in the definition. The factors for alternate medication's popularity go past the useful, according to a 1998 Journal of the American Medical Association post authored by John A. Astin, Ph.D., labelled 'Why Clients Use Different Medicine.' Astin composed that individuals looking for alternative medication aren't always dissatisfied with traditional medicine, yet they find 'these healthcare choices to be extra congruent with their very own values, ideas, and philosophical orientations toward wellness as well as life.' It holds true, there has been a considerable evolution in our time towards a much more proactive, all natural sight of health. Conventional medicine has a lopsided sight of the physical, mental, as well as spiritual body,' surmises Andrew Weil, M.D. By currently a cultural symbol with his friendly smile and also big grey beard, Weil has long been willing to handle the clinical mainstream and also supporter exactly what he calls integrative medication. His definition of the term is really simple: healing-oriented medication that considers the entire individual (body, mind, and also spirit), consisting of all elements of lifestyle. It emphasizes the therapeutic partnership between customer as well as healer as well as utilizes all proper treatments, both standard as well as alternative.

In 1994, Weil was important in developing the University of Arizona medical college's Program in Integrative Medication, the first detailed, continuing-education fellowship to give doctors the possibility to find out about alternative treatments such as botanicals, acupuncture, Reiki, massage, diet plan, and also reflection-- and how they could be made use of to improve clinical care, protect against ailment, as well as improve lifestyle. However more crucial, this program encourages a thoughtful shift in the technique of the healing arts. 'Instead of simply bringing these treatments in with an emphasis on condition, we're taking a look at the entire body, at way of life, at the partnership between the expert as well as the patient,' Weil discusses. 'Not just is this the sort of medication individuals want, but it has the possible to recover the core values of medicine in an age of handled treatment.'

Perron registered in the College of Arizona's Integrative Medication program specifically to return to a path a lot more straightened with her original objectives for coming to be a medical professional. 'I wished to feel more like I was taking part in recovery,' she explains.

Perron remained in the second graduating class of an associate fellowship program that requires 1,000 hrs certainly work (mostly online) over a two-year duration and also three on-site workshops. Until now, the University of Arizona's Program in Integrative Medication has ended up 151 doctors that have found out the best ways to integrate the most effective of the East and the West into their medical techniques-- and also right into their very own lives.

Yet, how far have we actually come since Weil began his program, considering there are more compared to 800,000 medical professionals in the country? Medical schools are loath to require an integrative curriculum. Also the University of Arizona medical institution does not require an integrative program, integrative medicine stays an elective. Under these situations, what type of impact can 150 or so physicians make?

Even though some people in the clinical establishment refer patients to therapies like acupuncture or massage therapy, there still exists a bias towards allopathic (that is, conventional) medication. Perron has actually experienced this resistance from medical coworkers that are doubtful of her integrative approach. 'There is this uncertainty that just what I'm attempting to do is also 'woo-woo,' also much out in left field,' she says.

Weil has certainly took on his reasonable share of flak, a few of it virulent. As an example, in a 1998 New Republic post, Weil gadfly Arnold S. Relman, M.D., former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and also teacher emeritus of medicine as well as social medication at Harvard Medical College, believed," Breathing' is a crucial and persisting style in Weil's prescriptions for wellness as well as healing, and it holds a popular place in [ Weil's book] 8 Weeks to Optimum Wellness, which showed up in 1997. As far as I can see, his viewpoints on this subject are largely nonsense.' Relman, apparently unknown with the yogic arts, included, 'In the lack of sustaining proof ... skepticism is certainly in order, specifically considering that idea in much of just what Weil is claiming concerning body and mind, and the ability of consciousness to run in the physical world, requires a rejection of the essential physical legislations upon which our present views of nature and the human body are based.' Weil rejects these remarks as a tirade from 'the quackbuster group. They'll pass from the scene. They're ideologues declaring to be doubters.'

With or without Weil, the medical facility could not neglect the pattern towards integrative medicine, especially taking into consideration the economics. In 1998, Americans invested $23.7 billion on alternative health and wellness care companies, in 1999, they spent $4.4 billion on herbs, up from $2.5 billion in 1995. In addition, the percentage of healthcare facilities supplying complementary and natural medicine has actually increased, from 8 percent in 1998 to 16.7 percent in 2002, inning accordance with the American Healthcare facility Organization. Clinical institutions have taken note: virtually two-thirds currently provide some sort of elective integrative medication curriculum.

Tracy Gaudet, M.D., supervisor of Fight it out College's Facility for Integrative Medicine (she was formerly the executive director of the University of Arizona's integrative medication program), has given herself as well as her cohorts a big charge. 'Our objective is to change the entire strategy to health care in this country,' she describes. 'We realize that it's not nearly using botanicals or obtaining acupuncture. Individuals are stating they desire the entire standard of therapy to change towards an extra aggressive concept. People wish to intend for their health as well as not await something bad to happen. In this way we're checking out the entire range of a person-- mind, body, and spirit, not just the body.'

To that finish, Gaudet and also her coworkers at Duke have created what they're calling a 'prospective' health and wellness care version, one that provides patients with individualized health care preparation and goals making use of a variety of modalities outside the clinical mainstream-- practices and also sources like yoga, mindfulness, reflection, and nourishment. Maybe the most innovative element of the Fight it out design is the principle of a 'health and wellness instructor,' a person educated to encourage actions modification. Initial results from a 10-month pilot research study, provided at an American Heart Association conference in 2014, suggest that participants in the treatment group significantly reduced their risk of developing heart problem. As well as this year, Duke will release outcomes showing that this group worked out extra regularly as well as consumed more healthy meals compared to the control group.

Renée Halberg, a licensed scientific social employee at the Battle each other College Eye Center, registered in the research study to assist take care of tension and also menopausal weight gain. At her consumption interview, she learned that her family members history of adult-onset diabetes and also hypertension, combined with her being overweight, greatly enhanced her danger for those diseases. 'I found out how much I might alter that negative outcome,' she states. 'It was worrying when they provided me with these threat variables expressed in lab results. It was also really motivating.'

The most valuable skill Halberg found out was the ability to change her habits towards the anxiety in her life. 'Like hundreds of various other people, I replaced food for things I lost: I was depressed. I was grieving over not having had a youngster. I underwent a divorce. And I acquired 60 pounds,' she remembers. 'That was terrible, particularly given that I didn't have any type of devices to do anything regarding it.'

The program, particularly the mindfulness and reflection training, aided her locate her self-confidence as well as motivation.

So far, she has actually lost concerning 25 extra pounds and also transformed her diet plan to incorporate whole grains, seeds, veggies, and health foods and also to remove fats and processed carbs. Her high blood pressure went from 150/90 to 120/80, and also her cholesterol levels are stable. The breathwork and also leisure skills are exactly what have helped her the a lot of. 'Whenever I have the impulse to consume something like a sweet bar, I do deep breathing or progressive muscle mass leisure,' she says. 'It takes my mind off it, as well as by the time I'm completed, I shed the wish. I feel focused as well as refreshed, and also I understand I can depend on myself rather than simply reacting to the tensions of the external globe.'

Research like Battle each other College's is vital to impacting change within the clinical establishment. Without it, it's really tough for the clinically minded to approve an extra integrative method to medicine. Fortunately is that funding for alternate treatment research has expanded significantly, owned mostly by the production of the NCCAM. From a first annual spending plan of $2 million in 1993, the center has actually expanded to a projected 2005 budget plan surpassing $121 million, and also today it is moneying groundbreaking research.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Facility in New york city is one of the organizations taking benefit of NCCAM's grant cash. Having actually opened up an integrative medicine center in 1999 both to deal with patients and also to better clinical analysis of corresponding therapies, the research healthcare facility has a number of studies in progress. One is checking out the results of acupuncture on bust cancer cells patients experiencing from chemotherapy-induced hot flashes, another is exploring massage therapy, and a third is discovering whether certain Oriental herbs can minimize or eliminate off tumors. The facility's healing as well as research study job is nicely intertwined and also accessible-- for instance, its Internet site (www.mskcc.org) consists of an 'Concerning Natural herbs' data source of natural herbs, botanicals, vitamins, and supplements that is examined and monitored by an oncology-trained pharmacist as well as a botanicals expert. It gives overviews of study, communication info, as well as damaging results, and mentions the benefits of natural medicine-- overall, a significant resource.

But also the world-renowned cancer facility experienced resistance when it initially opened its integrative center. 'It certainly took child actions,' claims Simone Zappa, the facility's program director. Once the doctors saw that alternate medication was efficient at handling symptoms like pain, queasiness, and also fatigue, however, points got easier. 'I think I could state that we're 90 percent there currently. There are still particular points we have to be aware of. Medical professionals aren't going to take us seriously if we begin chatting concerning chakras and power. Whatever our idea is, we need to maintain credibility in the doctors' eyes.'

Sloan-Kettering's integrative medicine center supplies both in- as well as outpatient care. For people in the medical facility, specialists come to the bedside as well as offer massage, meditation, hypnosis, and also yoga sessions-- at no added charge. Simply 3 blocks away, in a spa-like setup, is the Bendheim Integrative Medicine Facility, Sloan-Kettering's outpatient integrative medication center. Simply inside the entryway is a gurgling water fountain and also soft, relaxing shades. Crystals and also mandala art poise a few of the wall surfaces. Organic tea, fruit, or juice breaks and also discussion take area in a small kitchen location. At this facility, people and also their households could take yoga exercise classes, discover hypnosis or reflection, get a massage therapy, see a nutritionist, receive acupuncture, or take qi gong. 'We are very involved with the family members as well,' Zappa explains. 'Households are typically neglected in cancer circumstances, as well as we desire to provide them reflection, therapy, massage, and anxiety management methods.'

[gelissaleveille]

Tully and the Horror That Is Motherhood

     Motherhood is a fright, a concept that is coming more into the public sphere as time goes on. More and more women are telling their truths about what being a mother is about, despite the heavy burden to maintain the facade of perfect motherhood. These truths are often uncomfortable but have allowed mothers to shift the perspective from unsustainable standards to the changing landscape of politics that women have to deal with. This means coming to terms with a political landscape which uses motherhood as ammunition while ignoring the realities that many of them tackle. Media still finds mothers interesting, illustrated by the plethora of films centered around mothers and their children. What fascinates filmmakers more than motherhood are the oft-unspoken horrors that motherhood can become. 2018’s Tully sets the scene of a weary Marlo (Charlize Theron) beleaguered by the figurative weight of child rearing and the literal weight of a third-term pregnancy. Throughout the film, tension builds between Marlo and her kindergarten-aged son, Jonah, who has an unnamed neurodivergence which adds to the pressure Marlo already feels. She feels judged on all sides, a sentiment which she hides with little effort, even though she knows that being the perfect mother is a sham. With Tully, Diablo Cody unveils the man behind the curtain that is perfect motherhood, and in doing so, shows that the man is truly an infant, irate and irritable, ripping his way from the inside out.

     When Marlo is still weeks out from giving birth, she and her husband Drew, visit her wealthier brother, Craig and his carefree wife, Elyse, for dinner. Her sister-in-law has recently given birth, snapped back from her pregnancy with style, and has hired a night nanny to watch her children. She glows with the light of someone unencumbered by GMOs and stress and speaks to Marlo with a levity that makes Marlo look like the Grinch. Marlo is tired, and this is evidenced by her constant frown and generally frumpy appearance. Marlo is tired, like anyone would be who is weighed down by a 10 lb dependent that is eating her nutrients. Compared to Elyse, Marlo diverges from what “good” mothers are and she would resent that more if she wasn’t so tired. Diablo Cody’s writes about women and the expectations they face, especially while they’re in difficult transitions in their lives and the rejection of others’ perceptions of them. Her films dismiss satisfying, closed endings, instead choosing to end at the beginning of the next stage of her character’s lives.  And what is most evident about her films is that they embody a particular type of expectations of white femininity that remains blind to the diversity of women and femmes surrounding it.

     What we see when we watch Tully is the loneliness that surrounds Marlo, and this is made more distinct with the arrival of the titular Tully (Mackenzie Davis), a young, effervescent night nanny that Marlo succumbs to hiring. Motherhood and loneliness walk hand in hand with each other, and we see the loneliness Marlo is subjected to. Her husband is rarely seen in the movie, except when he comes home to play video games before falling asleep. He seems to be unaware of Marlo’s fatigue and Marlo talks to very few people throughout the film. Her loneliness is palpable, so much so that I caught myself asking where her female friends were, since mothers often stereotypically surround themselves with other mothers. Marlo is already burdened by two other children, which is to say they bring her no real joy. She doesn’t hate them, that much is evident, yet her tense relationship to her son (not with her son, as he is a child whose feelings are naturally centered around himself) is a tool to view her tense relationship to her feelings toward motherhood. It is this thing happening to her, something that she cannot control, which sucks at her life force without giving her a day of rest. It is when the night nanny comes that she is able to finally experience motherhood like all the magazines say one should and it is then that the horror begins.

     Pregnancy is a dangerous affair, and the effects of it range from person to person. My favorite way to describe a fetus is to compare them to parasites since their existence is inherently parasitic. Their connection to their mothers is real, as mothers are the vessels that they not only grow in but are the means of remaining alive by taking from the mother’s own body for itself. Babies have no real survival mechanisms, it’s a fault of our species, so their dependence on their mothers is vital. Because of that, there’s a real psychological connection that takes place. The pregnant woman is the only person who can verify the child’s personhood, it being an extension of themselves. Death by childbirth has enjoyed low risk in recent times, yet it is still something that can occur, sort of like the child discarding its past vessel to enjoy a new one.  The aftereffects of birth remain horrifying and mothers can take years to fully recover from it with optimal care. If they aren’t afforded that care, they are subject to remaining in their weakened state for longer than necessary. Postnatal can be even worse, evolving a woman into a postpartum depression that for many goes undiscovered. Postpartum depression has been illustrated in numerous films and television shows and paints these mothers as murderesses bent on ending the lives of their children. It’s because of this idea of postpartum depression that many mothers hide how they are feeling, lest they are decreed an ‘unfit mother’ and have their babies taken from them. This fear of the unfit mother can lead to some mothers spiral deeper into their depression since they can’t express their feelings.

     When Marlo is finally graced with Tully’s presence, she is able to embody the ideal white American supermom that she wanted to be. She bakes and cleans and performs motherhood in ways that she has been unable to do before. She is no longer tired and greets everyone with a preternatural cheerfulness that she finally allows herself after her birth. Tully is almost too perfect. She is serene and graceful, allowing Marlo to rest while also becoming a backboard upon which Marlo can fully unwind her thoughts. Her loneliness is fed as Marlo starts spending her nights with Tully before she goes to bed. She is not only able to meet her own expectations of what it means to be a mom, but everyone else’s as well, and that’s what really matters. It quickly becomes evident that Tully and Marlo share far too many similarities to be coincidence, so the audience is left to question how Tully could possibly know Marlo so well. Things start rapidly turning sour as Tully irresponsibly invites Marlo into NYC, leaving her newborn alone, just for a bit of fun. As the night goes on, Marlo comes face to face with the reality of her age and that she has grown up a lot from the person she’d been when she was younger. It is then that we see that Tully and Marlo are one and the same and that the nights of allowing Tully to take care of the child was Marlo entering a fugue state in which her fatigue hallucinated a persona to take care of herself and her baby.

     What is most horrifying about this realization is that Marlo’s body burrows deeply into the psyche of her loneliness and manifests that into Tully, how Marlo remembers herself to be at her best. It is a reflection of who Marlo wishes she was and in creating that hallucination, she is able to immerse herself into a protected space within her mind that saw only what it wanted to see. She was tricked by her own body. It casts pregnancy into an untrustworthy light, and since this wasn’t caught until she literally fell over a bridge, it brings up the question of which mothers will find themselves in the same state. For women who are able to become pregnant, the greatest accomplishment is having a healthy pregnancy, from which one can recover in record time. Putting Marlo into this situation brings focus to the fact that many mothers aren’t rejoicing in their change of status to mothers; they suffer in silence while trying to get through it. The baby is an unknowing revelation of the true horror in your own body betraying you because of something your body has created, the urge to kill the parasite which made you a shell of your former self.

     It would be remiss to note that this is the reality for many black women when they are pregnant. Black mothers have a frighteningly high risk of death during childbirth and it is the myth of the strong black woman that keeps medical professionals from taking their pain seriously. Cody, in her films, creates a landscape of the woman contrasted against the ideals of what femininity can be. However, her femininity is centered around white womanhood to such an extent that women of color are never seen in her films. In Juno, the film which put her on the map, she shows a teenage girl who ends up pregnant and how she comes to deal with putting the child up for adoption, while still trying to navigate teenage life. For magnitudes of black teenagers, this reality is often punctuated by socioeconomic hurdles that change the direction of their lives. This isn’t to say that Juno should have been put on the street like many other black teenagers, but there is a lack of accountability in Juno from noting how her life has been spared because of her place in life. Like many other white women when dealing with serious issues, she is able to remove herself from the equation relatively unscathed.

     For Marlo, it appears that her problems are all solved! She’s safe and her husband sees the extent to which he was ignoring his responsibilities. The unspoken conclusion though is that fatigue, postpartum depression, and mild psychosis are never solved after a chance visit to the hospital. When might Marlo’s hallucinations start again, now that she knows what her body is capable of? In a way, it can be deduced that her struggles with motherhood will be lifelong if her son Jonah can be used as a reflection of his mother. It is unknown if Marlo previously had any mental illness or neurodivergency that passed down to her son. It is unknown what the future holds for her. While she is now safe from herself, how does she return to the person that she originally hid from? Tully manifests a horrorscape that is a reality for mothers around the world. It questions what one thinks they know of themselves and tricks them into thinking something else. For Marlo, maybe her journey is done once the credits roll, but for millions of women and mothers around the world, that story may never end. The fright buries itself in the trenches of the mind so that life after birth becomes a mystery of mental illness that many women might never stop hiding.  

[briefpersonawombat]

A Guide on Electrical Muscle Stimulation

Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) has always been a little confusing to performance coaches and sports medicine professionals because the research is cloudy at best. Many of the reasons behind the limitations of science are the ethical boundaries you need to navigate, and the expectations you have with the results of those studies. I recently spent more time working with EMS, as more and more athletes are using EMS devices on their own and we are dealing with the hangover of injuries still lingering in the off-season. What I have learned is that the science is not perfect and there are no best practices.

There has been a resurgence in EMS in sport over the last five years because of Bill Knowles, Derek Hansen, and Henk Kraaijenhof sharing their experiences with athletes. I believe that EMS suit inluding electrostimulation vest has a place in sports performance and the rehabilitation of athletes, but we don’t have a solid explanation of why some athletes don’t respond to it while others seem to come alive from it. In this first piece, I will review some of the current literature on EMS and present a healthy perspective on this modality. (Part 2 will be published as “The Top 6 EMS Protocols for Sports Performance.”)

A Brief History of Electrical Muscle Stimulation in Modern Sport

Without getting into any unnecessary background on electrotherapy (such as a retelling of the way the ancient civilizations used electric fish or citing references to Volta and Galvani), it’s valuable to know how e-stim or EMS has been part of sport in the last few decades. Outside of product design, very little innovation has occurred since the 1950s, making EMS more of an art than a science. Coaches and therapists are sometimes frustrated because transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS for short, gets confused with sports electrostimulation.

To understand the difference between TENS and EMS, you need to know just a little bit about engineering and biology. TENS targets the sensory nerves, while EMS attacks the motor nerve and attempts to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible. TENS is currently used—mainly in vain, in my opinion—to manage pain. In 1965, Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall proposed the “gate control theory” of pain. What we know about the pain experience is extremely complex and personal, making the TENS intervention for sport very dated and extremely limited for athletes. Some research has shown positive findings, but the modality method of working with athletes in pain is lazy and proven unproductive in clinical research.

EMS focuses mainly on sending current to muscle groups in the hope of eliciting either a recovery response or a performance response later. Based on the current literature, recovery indices appear very limited, and performance benefits have shown up enough with some populations—including athletes—to be accepted as valid complementary treatments. The truth is that our understanding of electrostimulation is usually confined to a few studies on stroke victims and post-surgical wasting, and nothing I have seen has excited me.

What interests me, instead, are the clinicians who have used EMS creatively. Some of the studies on cellular and performance outcomes are strong enough to show that EMS isn’t just a placebo. I have used the Compex systems for nearly 20 years, and have some experience with the Marc Pro, PowerDot, Globus, and ARPwave. If I had to conclude which I think works best, it will be a short answer: All of them work, so choose one based on your needs and not its features.

If you were to go to a medical bookstore and check the physical therapy section on EMS, you would see that it tends to be a set of protocols based on pad placement, current settings, and scheduling sessions. This approach is nowhere near the same as what the modern clinician does and, since we are now entering the bionic athlete era with gait retraining, this only widens the gap between practice and research. It’s easy to shout that you’re ahead of the research, but without evidence, much of what clinicians do becomes like the dated RICE protocol that we still see people clinging to.

A Rapid Review of Electricity for Coaches and Therapists

Electric current can flow in different ways, such as through a wire, or something lesser known, such as a plasma state. The current generated from a muscle electrostimulator uses a conductive pad to transfer through the skin, causing the muscle to contract. The specifics of the muscle contraction will come later, but the important information is that electricity from medical muscle stimulators is more complicated than voltage and ampere. Electricity is not just about whether something is “on” or “off,” and we often take much of the technology we use for granted, especially the safety of the muscle stimulators. Most companies that get involved with e-stim devices are regulated, but it’s up to the consumer to do their homework on the quality of the product.

Experienced coaches and therapists commonly refer to stimulation parameters and share their practices, including the use of different types of settings, such as Russian Stimulation or strength protocols. Stimulation parameters and waveforms can be the subject of their own article but, for the most part, duty cycle, frequency, intensity, and ramp details are part of electrotherapy theory, but are not very well-documented. Regardless of the intimate details, many parallels exist between classic training principles and the current clinical practices of EMS use. Cycles, or waves of energy, are part of a “unified training theory” proposed by several coaches and sport scientists. EMS should be used to improve athletes, similarly to loading the body with training or rehabilitation.

Companies must do their job, not only to prove their machines are delivering exactly what they promise, but also to ensure that their products are used as intended. Most companies have terrible product education, and visiting their YouTube channels makes me cringe more than their highest simulator settings.

The Science of Electrical Contractions With Muscle

Sending electricity through a muscle group sounds like a bad science fiction movie, but that’s precisely what athletes are willing to do to get or feel better. It’s a priority to know what EMS can do physiologically and what is likely ineffective. Five years ago, pioneering researcher Nicola Maffiuletti summarized the differences between a normal muscular contraction and one from electrical stimulation in his NSCA journal article. The two types of contractions have similarities and differences that a coach should know. Overall, EMS is not going to make a major difference. However, like all things in sports training, the little things matter.

One development that throws this concept out the window is the rise in functional electrical muscle stimulation, equipped with electrostimulation shorts, which incorporates active training with the simultaneous overlay of EMS. While we can assume that the merging of both contractions will yield a hybrid result, most of the research is with disease models and only clinical rehabilitation has shown merit with this in early post-operation subjects. I have yet to see a single study with elite athletes performing EMS in conjunction with conventional training, but the case reports and work with spinal cord injury patients is promising.

Finally, EMS is used to help with neuromuscular adaptations and, while sessions may prevent atrophy, the improvements are from neural drive-like mechanisms, not from increased protein synthesis rates. EMS doesn’t directly create hypertrophy changes to the muscle, and a study on nutrition and e-stim showed no acute changes.

What is also important to know is that electrically stimulated muscles are, for the most part, superficial, and that is useful for propulsive muscle groups. Some rogue therapists are using fine needle EMS with low current for deeper muscle penetration for rehabilitation purposes. Most EMS experiences are one muscle at a time, but some athletes are getting simultaneous total body sessions. Nobody knows if total bodywork is more time-efficient or if a possible synergistic benefit exists, but down the road, studies will likely discover if there is a value beyond convenience.

The Scientific Benefits of Stimulating the Neuromuscular System

If you were to read a catalog of features and settings for a personal e-stim device, the list would be very long, ranging from relaxation massage all the way to explosive strength. While, technically, different settings will have unique stimulation protocols from the device programming in the electrostimulation center, the reality is that only three purposes exist with EMS and the research is enough to form a realistic expectation. The three EMS benefits are strength training, rehabilitation, and a little regeneration. Distilling the benefits more, you can make an argument that EMS helps with general muscle strength and facilitates low-level recovery for travel. That’s about it, but it’s enough to warrant investing in it, especially when sport moves into the unfortunate health compromise for winning.

Sports Performance

EMS and strength, and the results that may lead to jump and sprint performance, are mixed in the research. However, enough research shows that if EMS is done with specific protocols, a positive result is possible, especially with the less-trained athlete. So far, much of the work has been done with soccer, and some recent investigations of youth jumping performance and plyometrics had favorable outcomes.