#anyways therapy is going well.

[writterings]

ngl been off all social media for a while for mental health and its been great. ive been reading books. delving into early christian teachings and found out god is dead. went to the beach. watching a tv show. petting animals. fuck this online world man it's soooo bad for your mental health.

[forestofsprites]

tail end of season seven you will always be famous

[mueritos]

happy pride to all queer children of immigrants

patreon

[wellsbering]

[mamawasatesttube]

you know how bruce is often doing shit like bringing up his dead parents all the time apropros of nothing? like

(action comics #784)

well i think it would be REALLY funny if he pulled that one at kon sometime, because:

(supergirl (1996) #76)

i need this actually. like i NEED this. can you imagine??

bruce: you don't know pain like i do. i watched my parents die-- kon: well hey, at least you HAD parents! bruce: ...hn.

like what would his dramatic brooding ass even say to that. lmaooo

[jayjamjary]

Hello Lupin III fandom. I come bearing haha funny Goemon comic.

And then this was a pretty big project and I was forced to do it on Ibis Paint X :c so I'm going to show off the draft vs final down here.

Tada. Terribly grainy video but oh well, it's the best that ibis could give me.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I was talking to a client today about "how to identify masking" as part of the process of learning how to shift masking from a reflexive coping strategy to a voluntary and conscious one and I feel like it led to a really important shift in framework FOR ME about masking and social distress.

Paraphrasing, the ideas we came to are as follows:

One of the reasons masking can be so difficult to recognize is because, essentially, masking is the act of performing "yourself" as a mirror for the other person you are interacting with. It's this idea of "I will micro-manage my own mood, affect, behavior, mannerisms, and environment in order to reflect back to you whatever version of "self" you need from me because if I don't there will be consequences". So because masking is essentially performing "mirroring" as selfhood by amplifying or minimizing aspects of yourself based on what you think the other person wants to see in you, it varies significantly from one context to another. The major commonality is that it takes up an INCREDIBLE amount of energy, mental and emotional resources, cognitive processing power, etc. So you don't identify masking by specific behaviors so much as by the feeling of "having a significant amount of your mental/emotional resources be occupied by the act of social interaction" to the point that it doesn't leave enough left-over for other cognitive tasks, or leaves you feeling exhausted and worn out, or basically by the impact that masking has on you during and after.

In this framework, part of why we get so anxious about new or unfamiliar people or situations is because we don't know how to mask in that context yet, and so until we get there and figure it out, we're basically just terrified of what could go wrong since we don't know what we're walking into.*

*This is the underlying framework of anticipatory and obsessive anxiety as well. Anticipatory and obsessive anxiety functions as the mechanism by which we conduct both predictive reasoning-basd advance planning and review/self-correctionof our mental predictive model.

Autistic aversion to uncertainty has a lot to do with our need to be able to use predictive reasoning-based advance planning to cope with "social deficits" aka how much harder it is for us to interpret subtextual/nonverbal cues, learn/meet social expectations, and work through/around disordered sensory processing. That predictive reasoning requires us to be familiar, in advance, with the stable constant factors that influence decision making in social contexts. If we aren't familiar with the constant variables than we can't plan, if we can't plan than we are more likely to make noticeable social mis-steps, and if we take notable social mis-steps there are consequences. It becomes necessary for us to be hypervigilent to observable patterns in other people's behavior in order to try to reverse engineer the social interaction playbook on the fly. That ends up making us more likely to assume personal responsibility for predicting and managing the emotional regulatory needs of people around us at all costs, replicating the behavioral/cognitive impacts of chronic traumatic stress due to the activation of our sympathetic nervous system from chronic hypervigilence.

Essentially, masking is a cognitive defense mechanism to severe and/or persistant traumatic interpersonal stressors. As the neurological impacts of chronic traumatic stress heal, we mask less frequently. But in order to heal from chronic traumatic stress, the human brain requires a safe environment that does not trigger a retraumatization episode or replicate feelings of helplessness/fear for safety. In other words, reducing/terminating masking safely requires us as autistic people to have consistent access to social environments in which we are able to utilize autistic interpersonal boundaries without fear of consequence or chonically unmet need. This requires the people around us to be able to respect not only autistic interpersonal boundaries, but also autistic self-expression/advocacy modalities and mediums.

I feel like a lot of the pieces of this framework have been rattling around in my head for a while but the flavor of words hit just right today and all the connections snapped into place.

Anyway, I'm still sort of sorting through the clinical implications of this framework but I think it's a direction I want to keep exploring for sure.

[sluckythewizard]

these are A BIT OLD but uhhh here check out these aggio doodles i did forever ago. still VERY happy w my colors :3

[thrumugnyr]

Hey! Started following you from the moment you started posting things on #curse of strahd. Haven't seen Patataj in a while. I love your art and will definetley commission you when the opportunity comes!

Just wanted to know how is your loveley bard doing? How is the campaign overall?

I hope this question didn't bother you much

Patataj is still running through Barovia, only making the soundest of decisions! For example he wanted to protect some werewolves from certain death after he helped them rebel so he agreed with Strahd's offer of giving him 10 whole favors. He was just too happy about the werewolves being okay.

Rahadin was angry, not so much because Patataj owes favors to Strahd, but because Patataj is clearly absolutely terrible about making deals. And what if something else asks for a bargain?

[hephs-thighs]

[ruvviks]

PLEASE DO NOT TAG AS YOUR OWN OC OR PAIRING.

Nathan and Ruben share a bond more powerful than most; mutual understanding through past experiences no one should ever have to go through, and through past actions so horrible they cannot be spoken of. Their grief and the blood on their hands binds them to the STEM technology they created, which has alienated them from the rest of the world— but they give each other the comfort they have both longed for so desperately for years, and that is all they need. They are each other's counterpart; you cannot imagine one without the other, like two sides of the same coin. Through their pain, their grief, their desire, and their regret, they have become one.

anna akhmatova, the guest // bones; equinox // 'i won't become' by kim jakobsson // agustín gómez-arcos, the carnivorous lamb // by oxy // achilles come down; gang of youths // czeslaw milosz, from 'new and collected poems: 1931-2001' // 'extended ambience portrait from a resonant biostructure' and 'migraine tenfold times ten' by daniel vega // a little death; the neighbourhood // marina tsvetaeva, from 'poem of the end' // by drummnist // katie maria, winter // 'nocturne in black and gold the falling rocket' by james abbott mcneill whistler // micah nemerever, these violent delights // body language; we are fury // 'the penitent' by emil melmoth // chelsea dingman, from 'of those who can't afford to be gentle'

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@lestatlioncunt, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[biblicalhorror]

Aroace Riz real but also Fabian is SO clearly in love with him and Riz has no idea

[curioscurio]

Got up early (for me), ate a light and healthy breakfast, applied to some jobs, took a long mental health walk with the dogs, gave one of them a bath, and even did some phone calls and messaging regarding my medication and pharmacy problems and managed to sort it out without breaking down!!! And! Showered!! Kicking ASS at mental health today

[celestialrealms]

I just noticed Mephisto matches with Barbatos (who is matchy with Diavolo) in the anniversary outfits in his SSR memory card

These three were also the only three who had half masks in the masquerade event!!!

Anyway, The Royals with Mephisto chat group when? We got one for Purgatory Hall with Raphael..... it's just fair !!

And one for Mephisto and Diavolo as well, but also one for Mephisto and Barbatos too. because you can't tell me their relationship isn't deeper than the devs portray when Mephisto has lines like this about Barbatos's room:

[deoidesign]

.

[gxlden-angels]

Bro I hate fundamentalists and culturally-fundie parents they'll say shit like "spare the rod spoil the child am I right haha yea my parents used to have to beat my ass with a switch almost everyday but I sure did learn my lesson" but like??? no you didn't??? you were hit multiple times for something you very obviously did not, in fact, learn

Like studies about how harmful even lightly spanking children is aside, you're literally contradicting yourself?? Some even admitted they got worse as they got older cause they wanted to see how far they could push their parents before they got punished

And studies not aside, you're gonna get child raising advice from the same book that tells you to stone your wife if her hymen doesn't break on your wedding night instead of the decades of research we have now?? Just say you're a bad parent and move on my guy. Skill issue