#brain chemistry

[sekhmetpaws]

Once more thinking about something that permanently altered my brain's chemistry and the way I see life and I think I should share it here, even if no one is going to see. In the How to Train Your Dragon book series, there is a scene where Hiccup faces an enemy who owns an axe that has two sides, one that is golden and shiny, the other that is blackened, bloody and rusty. He would throw the axe in the air and make decisions depending on which side it would land on. Said axe eventually is used to decide Hiccup's fate. However, despite being trapped by the narrative in many ways, Hiccup is the protagonist of his own destiny. He reaches for the axe as it falls, and turns it himself so it lands on the golden side. Whether the axe was going to land on the gold or the dark side originally is irrelevant. He chooses to be alive and be free. Every time I go through a difficult moment, as I am right now, I think about this scene, as silly as it may be.

I am allowed to grab the destiny axe. And so are you.

[s3znl-gr3znl]

shoutout to all the gamers who had their whole brain chemistry completely rewired by that scene in halo 2 where the gravemind is talking to chief and arby

[windudemon]

JUNGIAN COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS ARE REALLY NEUROTRANSMITTERS

Dopamine (Ne) is all about exploration, novelty, and active engagement with the world. It’s testing, experimenting, seeing what works, and staying open to multiple perspectives in real time. It’s "what if" thinking, bouncing between ideas, trying them out, and learning through trial and error. This is why the dopamine pathway is short and reactive, driving people to act quickly and be highly responsive to stimuli.

Acetylcholine (Ni) is much more about conception, depth, and refinement. It’s about filtering through possibilities, refining, and finding the most efficient path. This is more about a long-term vision, where you discount distractions and focus on what’s likely to work based on deep internal understanding. Like Ni, acetylcholine works with refined material, builds on past knowledge, and strives for clarity over time. Quality control over quantity. The pathway is longer, as it requires more time for reflection and synthesis.

Norepinephrine (Se) = Sensory Engagement / External Stimulation: Norepinephrine is often about stimulation, arousal, and action in the present moment, which matches Se's focus on immediate sensory input and the world outside. Se engages directly with external stimuli, maximizing the sensory experience—seeing, hearing, touching, and reacting to what's right in front of them, seeking novel or impactful experiences. Norepinephrine similarly drives people to engage with their surroundings, often seeking intensity and excitement. Both want to be in the moment and responsive to the environment.

GABA = Si (Introverted Sensing): GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, meaning it calms down neural activity and contributes to a sense of stability, relaxation, and grounding. This is highly similar to Si, which is about internal sensory recall, stability, and creating a grounded mental state based on past experiences. Just like Si helps us process and stabilize memories and experiences, GABA contributes to calmness and internal balance.

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Ooops. Clickbait. Only the perceiving functions can be directly associated with neurotransmitters but here is why:

Perceiving functions (Ne, Ni, Se, Si) are more fundamental in terms of information gathering and conceptualizing because they deal with raw data, sensory input, and ongoing experience. These are processes that happen almost automatically and are more closely tied to the REACTIONS of the brain to immediate stimuli, which is where neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, GABA, and serotonin come into play.

Judging functions, on the other hand, are higher-order, more abstract, and deal with organizing, categorizing, and deciding how to act on the information the perceiving functions gather. These processes tend to be more cognitive, involving more logical, computational thinking (yes, fi too!), which requires less direct chemical input and is mediated by higher-level brain areas like the prefrontal cortex. They are more internalized, less reactive to real-time input, and more about evaluating and controlling the data.

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But hey! If you really twist my arm, I could associate Fi with serotonin and Fe with oxytocin.

When it comes to Te and Ti, all I can think of is the lack of serotonin and oxytocin. You lack love, you are less moody, you think more robotic, sticking to the facts as opposed to idealistic or personal or communal values.

[xiexiecaptain]

Fun fact I've learned through therapy:

The regions of your brain involved in and the neural processes occurring in response to shame, rejection, and other social-emotional pain are extremely similar to those in response to physical pain.

[Source 1] [Source 2] [Source 3]

Obviously they're not identical when you get into the granular patterns.

The point is that the brain's overall neural response and the areas engaged activate the same fight/flight/freeze/fawn to something it identifies as danger similarly, regardless of if the source of said danger is physical pain or social pain/social rejection. Your brain sees that kind of pain as just as dangerous as physical pain. Therefore the neurological and behavioral trauma response patterns engaged follow similarly.

Stop minimizing your trauma, folks.

[sixbucks]

Hacking like a mofo.

[romirella-96]

Willpower is getting stuff done despite bad dopamine regulation. Motivation is what dopamine regulation is.

[psychologybat]

Trying to figure out WHAT THE FUCK I'm doing with digital art for the first time 💀

[patience4not]

[minotaurmerkaba]

[greenchrysanthemum20]

Permanent Changes to Brain Chemistry (Or, This isn't the Genre you Think it is)

Hmmm, been thinking about Coffee Theory lately, and also the new wave of Aziraphale had a plan and was trying to communicate in Secret Code to Crowley but Crowley didn't get the part where it was in fact a code..... I have to wonder as someone who has been around the fandom block once or twice, I think both of these theories come from the same place: The Sherlock Hiatus. Yes, folks, we are in the new rendition of The Hiatus™. It feels weird to call it that, as Good Omens is not a show that regularly airs but that fact that we will be in a drought of Canon from August 2023 to 2026 at probably the soonest means that we are in fact in A Hiatus Season. Well, what the fuck does Sherlock have to do with Good Omens ??

I'm glad you asked! My New Thought of the week is that the Sherlock Hiatus permanently changed the brain chemistry on this website, or at least of fans of a certain stripe. Sherlock was a show that I obsessed over (rather late to the game, in 2017), and so did many others. With the cliffhanger of Sherlock's jump at the end of season 2, there was nothing for fans to do but theorize and theorize and theorize.

Sherlock was also a show that actively hated its queer legacy, and by extension, its fandom (looking at you, Steven Moffat). This is getting long so my point is, I think the off-beat super complex theories about GO and the final fifteen come from a place of being actively cat-fished by Sherlock, years ago. I mean, Sherlock S3E1 basically took all of fans' theories, tore them to shreds, spit on them, lit them on fire, and then presented it's own, Even More Crackpot theory as to how Sherlock survived??? The whiplash, maaaan.

So fans, having gone through All Of That, with Sherlock, have now come to almost expect mysteries in fannish shows to be overly complicated. And just, that isn't how Good Omens works?? Like, Neil and the rest of the cast and crew Do Love the fandom, and want to tell a story that is Doing Right by the fans. (Dottie and Sadie in Neil's asks are hard not to swing as the products of a good natured uncle winking and thumbing his nose at you). And second, I think these elaborate theories mistake the final fifteen as being part of a mystery show when in reality the final fifteen are part of a tragedy. Aziraphale is Hamlet. He is a tragic hero. We are to root for him, despite his flaws, or even because of them. It is because of Aziraphale's altruism that he makes the choices that he does. Altruism is Aziraphale's Hamartia, his tragic flaw.

He may be being played by Metatron, but because of who he is as a character, as a guardian and protector, Aziraphale cannot walk away from the chance to protect the earth and make things better in heaven without sacrificing a large part of his values and Who He Is. Metatron knows that Aziraphale is altruistic, as a constant, but that that altruism can be twisted and led astray.

In a tragedy, there is a point called Peripeteia, which means the point in which the tragic hero's flaw condemns them to a certain course of action. This is what we see Aziraphale go through in the final fifteen.

He is offered a choice, and he makes a choice, and in the end, it isn't a choice. Looking at GO through the lens of a tragedy, all of those statement can coexist, and they each have equal weight.

Crowley, on the other hand, is Orpheus. Don't look back. You are leaving, you are on your way out the door, you can sense her presence behind you. Don't look back. The cavern grows darker, the threat looms larger, you talk into the echoes, and every time you hear her reply, you cannot tell how far away she is from you. Don't look back.

You look back. You kiss him, furiously, in a bookshop. You have looked. She is taken from you. Crowley knew that that kiss was never going to have worked. But he needed to kiss Aziraphale anyway. He never could have told Aziraphale before the Metatron showed up that he loved him. (Can one blame Orpheus, for being a plaything to the muses?) (Can one escape a Hell that doesn't send Strongly Worded letters?)

You have to look. You have to love her. You have to let her know you love her, even as you cannot have her.

Obviously, Good Omens as a whole isn't a tragedy, but the final fifteen of Season 2 are one, and I think we have a lot to learn from treating them as such.

[whumpookies]

Can I just take 1 minute of your time it's worth it!

Us whumpers are unique, no one knows why we smirk or smile why we feel giddy watching whump, that whumperfly feeling of butterflies in the stomach and a rush of pleasure that comes with it...

Now stick with me here..example 1..

Now I've had this kinda conversation with @of-wounds-and-woes and @99point9percentwhump though with 99 it's a lot more than I've had over the last few months... Which led me to wonder...

example 2..

They say curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back so I did some digging... Thank you google and medical texts...

I conclude, we are not broken by being Whumpers we are blessed!

There are 4 chemicals in the brain that I pretty much figure work together and give us whumperflies...example number 3.

if we ever had a brain scan these parts of our brain releasing these chemicals would be lit up like the 4th of July, Guy Fawkes night, Eid and Chinese new year mixed together!

So may I introduce to you the whumperfly goodness chemicals that might be giving us that goodness?

All four work together and gives us that giddy feeling of whump goodness, maybe we or you don't get all four or even the whumperflies but you do feel the satisfaction of watching I bet... example 4.

So let me ask covering the beating, sickness, collapsing, fever and... example 5

We're the whumperflies there in any of the gifs!?!?

All in all, these somehow must or someway gives us the whumperflies, gives us whumpers something to think upon...

But please remember. You are a whumper, you are not broken, you are not any degrading name you think of yourself because you like it, you are special and unique with a special gift to release some very special brain chemicals...

Share with the whump community and see what they think.

Just don't get me started on why there are more female whumpers than males here on Tumblr alone...🤣

[oxyg3n-isoverrated]

why do I have to have a brain that is constantly telling me the person I love doesn't love me back

[im-ultraviolent]

Zach Bryan is country Hozier.

[aromanticannibal]

Hello I am once again asking you to listen to Feldup's new album (edit: ive made a rec post)

[anothergravetoday]

grab your needles, we’re letting hozier and sleep token rewrite our brain chemistry in efforts to fortify the threads holding us to who we knew we were in our core. what we’ve always believed has always existed, even if we needed to create it with our hands and our mouths. it was inside us always.

[dodgermd]

Super random, but I am very facinated by the fact that - did you know - brains have a default mode they will reset you on whenever there is no other imidiate emotion to be had and you actually can train your brain on new default moods too. So, yeah, which is why some people are cheerful and others grumpy it's their default mood and also why therapy works, I guess, new default mood installed.