#but also an eeg which sounds like fun

[hylianengineer]

The neurolinguistics department at my university is recruiting nagive English speakers who are learning Spanish for some research project of theirs and it sounds very cool and I want to do it but I am exhausted and have very little free time. This is a 9 hour commitment across 3 sessions and they have not told us when they will schedule things. Should I attempt to do the cool thing or should I accept that I am simply too busy?

[agaypanic]

hi omg i got so excited when i saw you were doing egon spengler x reader aaaa! could you do egon and an personality opposite reader? he's all serious and deadpan while she's happy and upbeat (it'd be cool if she was the new girl in the team and had a crush on him). sort of like a "she fell first, he fell harder" situation?

The Sunlight On My Spores (Egon Spengler X Reader)

Masterlist

Request Something!

Summary: The new addition to the ghostbuster’s team is a ray of sunshine, and she has her sights on a scientist with an interest in fungi and the supernatural.

A/N: AHHHHH ive been waiting for an egon/ghostbuster request!!! since i havent written for egon before, i hope i get his character right lol also idk shit about science/paranormal jargon. and idk if eegs is spelled the way it should but it’s pronounced ee-gs, like egon but s instead of on

***

Joining the Ghostbusters definitely brought amusement and hecticness to your daily life. Although you handled more of the office work, you had seen your fair share of the paranormal action. Namely Slimer, who would get ahold of your lunch every now and then.

Ray was the first on the team that you had met, being the one to interview you. You liked to call him ‘Sun-Ray’ for his bright and positive personality.

You were pretty much hired on the spot, mainly because Janine had been complaining about the lack of extra help. But as long as you had a steady paycheck, you didn’t mind. Ray had immediately showed you around the firehouse. You met Peter and Winston on the main floor, the former being flirtatious and the latter being more polite in his welcoming. 

Then Ray took you up to the second floor, where the dining area, sleeping quarters, and lab were.

That’s where you met Egon Spengler. His tall frame was hunched over one of the lab’s many workbenches, doing some soldering work on a proton pack.

“Spengs!” Ray said with a wide grin, bringing you over to the scientist. The man in question set down the soldering iron and straightened up, adjusting his glasses as he turned around.

“What is it, Ray?” He asked in a somewhat monotone voice. He glanced at you, furrowing his brows slightly before looking back at his friend. “Who’s this?”

“This is Y/n, our new recruit!” Ray replied enthusiastically, patting you on the shoulder. 

“Ah, so you’ve filled the new receptionist position.” He said, giving you a once-over. “Janine will be happy to hear that.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Spengler.” You greeted with a smile. He outreached his hand, which you grasped firmly and gave a few shakes. His hand was slightly calloused, probably from his work, but still felt nice.

“Egon’s fine.”

“I’ve read a few of your papers on paranormal studies; I think the whole thing’s fascinating.” 

Some of his research papers weren’t the only thing of Egon’s you’ve seen. Ever since the Ghostbusters had gained some popularity, you couldn’t help but find him quite cute, spending an extra few seconds looking at him whenever a picture of the group was in your newspaper or on your television screen. 

And he was definitely even more handsome in person.

“Well then, you’ve definitely come to the right place.” Ray grinned, but your focus was still on the spectacled man before you.

“Thank you, that’s very flattering.” Although his voice was a bit monotonous, the response was genuine. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to check on my spore samples.”

“Spore samples?” You asked with curiosity.

“Yes. I collect spores, molds, and fungus.” 

“That sounds like fun!” Egon was a bit taken aback by your response. That wasn’t a reply he was used to hearing. And the fact that you sounded genuine and peppy was even more confusing to him. 

Ray, wanting to show you the rest of the firehouse, started to pull you away. You gave a quick goodbye to Egon before bounding down the stairs after Ray. Meanwhile, Egon needed to take a second to get his befuddled thoughts straight before he could tend to his samples.

***

You fell into a routine pretty quickly. The job was mainly making appointments and ensuring the boys were ready for a call, scheduled or unexpected. Occasionally, you filed paperwork or got coffee for everyone at odd hours in the day. But because the job was shared between you and Janine, you often had at least a little bit of free time.

“Got another one!” Peter announced as he stepped out of the Ecto-1 that had just rolled into the firehouse, holding up a slightly smoking trap. As Winston and Ray emerged from the car, you wondered if Peter had been wearing a poncho because he was the only one not covered at least halfway in goo. “He was a real slimy one, too.”

“I can tell.” You laughed as Ray and Winston peeled out of their uniforms with a grimace. 

“You’re back.” Egon’s voice almost made you jump; you hadn’t realized he had come down from the lab. He walked until he was standing next to you, holding his hand out towards the ghost trap. “I’ll take that, Peter. Ray, come with me, I want to discuss the containment facility with you.”

“What about it?” Ray asked as he closed his locker. Egon brushed past you to walk down to the basement, Ray close behind.

Not wanting to be caught staring at Egon’s leaving form, you whipped back around to the car. It seemed that Winston and Ray weren’t the only ones who got slimed. Poor Ecto.

“I think I’m gonna clean the car.” You thought aloud. “You guys don’t have any more calls until tomorrow.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, Y/n,” Winston said. 

“Well, someone’s gotta do it,” Peter interjected. “We gotta ride in style, after all.”

“Really, Winston, I don’t mind.” You insisted. “I don’t have anything else to do.”

“Suit yourself.” He said with a shrug.

Patting you on the shoulder, Winston went upstairs to take a shower. While Peter hung up his jumpsuit, you looked around in a storage closet for car washing supplies.

“Y/n?” You looked towards the sound of the voice, seeing Egon peeking out of the basement entrance.

“Yeah, Eegs?”

“You, uh-” He cleared his throat, cheeks going slightly pink, and you wondered why. “You can wear my jumpsuit, if you want. So your clothes don’t get dirty.”

You grinned, straightening up from your slightly bent position. Peter raised a brow at Egon, although you couldn’t see that because you were also looking at the tall man.

“Thanks, Egon!”

He nodded once before going back downstairs, Peter hot on his tail. 

“You sweet on her or something, Spengs?” He asked quietly, not wanting to gain your attention.

“Shut up, Venkman.”

***

Music blasted as you washed the soap suds of the Ecto-1. You were pretty sure everyone was out of the building, either getting lunch or just not wanting to be in the firehouse. You had taken Egon up on his offer, his jumpsuit fitting very baggy on you. You had to roll up the sleeves and pantlegs, but you didn’t mind. Especially when seeing the patch with his last name on your chest.

Over the music and your own voice singing along to Whitney Houston, you didn’t hear Egon walking down the stairs. When he reached the bottom step, he watched as you jumped around to the beat. 

“I need a man who’ll take the chance, on a love that burns hot enough to last.” You sprayed the last of the soap off the front of the car before turning the hose off. “So when the night falls, my lonely heart calls. Ohh- Oh!” You yelped in surprise as you turned around, seeing Egon, who was still looking at you. His eyes trailed up and down your form, but it was so quick that you didn’t notice. “Hey, Eegs! I thought you’d gone out with the others.” Even after turning down the radio to hear his response, you still danced a bit. Although, your movements were a bit more subdued.

“I was up in the lab, checking on my fungi.” 

“Oh! Was the music distracting you?” You asked, already sounding apologetic. “I can keep it down if you-”

“No!” Egon answered quickly, taking the both of you by surprise. He cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses. “No, the music’s fine. I wanted a snack and found that we were out of Twinkies, so I was going to get some.” 

You nodded in understanding, moving to put away the car cleaning supplies that you were no longer using. And then you noticed that Egon hadn’t made any move to leave. You looked over your shoulder, seeing that he was standing in the same spot with eyes darting around the room, and turned back around to face him. You tilted your head with a questioning look.

“Would you, ahem, would you like to come with me?” He seemed a bit shy to ask, and it made you smile brightly. “Wouldn’t want to leave you here all alone and all.”

“Sure!” You answered enthusiastically. “Lemme just put all this away.” 

Without asking, Egon helped you gather everything and put it in the storage closet. You unrolled the limbs of Egon’s uniform, and he couldn’t help but admire you in his attire, despite how much the fabric consumed you. It was hung back up in his locker with care before you grabbed your purse from your desk and skipped over to him.

“Ready?” You nodded, and the two of you walked out of the firehouse. Without thinking, you looped your arm through his. But before you could pull away and apologize for not asking, he was already pulling you along the sidewalk, the tiniest hint of a smile on his serious face.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 22 Thoughts: Couples Therapy

A really great episode. Everything about this one was so well done and I don't think I've got a single complaint. Not that I often have those but still. It'll be interesting to see how much of this is deeply plot relevant and how much is just a fun spooky time too. This is another belated post on account of a hospital visit, and a half-written draft getting deleted. Hopefully we'll be back to our regularly scheduled posts for next week.

Spoilers for episode 22 below the cut.

Lena is just the best, isn't she? Unfortunately we just learned that she's married and so I've got no shot, but still. Lena is great in every scene she's in and I'm really glad we get so much of her and Gwen as they have stellar chemistry. I'd be interested to see if this ministerial visit goes anywhere. I'm not 100% whether it was a plot hook or a convenient way to not fire Gwen. She's obviously not in Lena's good books so she this could be a way to explain away not firing her so she can leverage that position for something and avoid the firing.

Augustus incidents are always such a treat. This one probably wasn't maybe my favourite of them for the incident itself but it was for the sound design and the music. They really hit it out of the park for this one IMO. Unfortunately this is likely the last Augustus statement of the season if it's sticking to the 1 per act cadence. Of minor note this does disprove that .JMJ errors herald Augustus in some way.

Okay, onto the statement proper. Hans Berger and Dr. Richard Caton are both real people, and the information within this statement is largely factual. Berger did invent the EEG in 1924, held off on publishing his research due to the reaction he presumed it'd received, and when it was later published a lot of the scientific community at the time was ready to discount it. It took quite some time before what he'd managed was really appreciated. But don't feel too bad for him as he also worked with the Nazis. So coercing a patient into getting their brain ejected from their skull isn't the only sin of his. Caton is similarly accurate here and the two of them had similar fates with their research. Without Caton's work Berger likely wouldn't have been able to create the EEG and Berger was one of the few people to give Caton's research much attention at all. It came very close to being forgotten about. Ursula was very real too and did start as Berger's assistant before they got married. Although not mentioned in the incident is that she was a baroness.

Okay, so the big thing in this one is obviously the experiment itself. I've heard quite a few theories on what's actually going on here. Lots of talk about it being Freddy or JMJ. I generally think that's a massive stretch that doesn't really mesh with anything in the text of this, nor the historical context of Freddy and JMJ. The incident predates both Freddy as software and JMJ appearing as voices by not insignificant margins. It's obviously entirely possible that something was floating in the void waiting for a host PC but in context to the text of the incident I don't really see how that's a logical conclusion. The incident was about a secondary or true self within a person that can be accessed through the hemispherical bridge. Which is sort of exactly what we see here. It's also generally how it works IRL, split-brain is a fairly well researched topic for what it is.

Which is all to say I think this one is fairly literal. Herr Schmidt isn't a psychic gateway to Freddy but that's not to say I don't think these things are related. I very much do but I think it's foreshadowing and metaphor rather than literally the same thing. But of course I think that because I've been talking about this idea of a homunculus JMJ for a bit. You can read about it in an essay entitled JMJ: Frankenstein; or, the Modem Prometheus. It's a short read for my standards and my favourite pun of all my essays, so check it out. The dream is a little more likely to be a psychic event but it's also pretty literal for a dream as the imagery goes so there isn't much to say on it.

A very fun incident all around. As mentioned the main subject matter of callosal syndrome (split-brain) is a very real phenomena. I'm not going to get too into it but if it's something you want to dig into I'd suggest looking into the research of Michael Gazzaniga as well as Roger Sperry. The latter won a Nobel Prize for their work on this too.

I don't have much to say on the last to sections. Both conversations Sam has with Alice and Celia, respectively, are pretty explicit. Although Sam's mention of Alice being controlling does give us some insight into a likely reason they broke up. He's also very right that Alice has made a pretty quick turn around on all this and is now actively working against it despite not buying it at all.

Then it was something about a Marvin and Jason, I think?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: 4488 sounds about right. Not a load to say on that one IMO.

CAT# Theory: 13 is somewhat interesting from the Person/Place/Object theory. Mostly because it's another that's a really big stretch and also doesn't help anyone know anything. There wasn't really anything out of the ordinary here as far as people and objects go, and in either case flagging that doesn't really impart any useful context. So it's just another one of those largely redundant data points.

R# Theory: Another old letter by an old man at BC. Love to see the consistency as it lines up very well with my ideas here.

Header talk: Experiment (Brain) -/- Imprisonment (Existential) is a somewhat interesting crosslink assuming it's correctly filed. Your second self being literally imprisoned in your head at all times is pretty wild.

[missspringthyme]

March 1st, 2024

Had another eeg session today, but this time we collected data from Greek girl. I did manage to get out of the first hour or so of recording because I needed to go ask the service desk for help with fixing my MATLAB. I'm missing 2 toolboxes that should've come with my university license and I can't do any processing without them unfortunately.

Today's fit included my little white boots that unfortunately both had the rubber ripped out of the heel. I like the shoes but I keep avoiding wearing them because they are so incredibly loud without the padding. I'm not sure how to fix it, but I'm not going to just throw out perfectly good boots. Anyway, because of that I kept walking on my tip toes a little to try and lessen the noise, but it was hard to find the line between walking funny and sounding funny. It did take me a while to find the service desk, but when I did I was told the guy there was on lunch break and would be back soon. The service desk is temporarily located in a library I didn't know existed in the building I had most of my tutorials last semester, which is not the main building with the main library. I took a seat at one of the tables and doodled to some music before the guy tapped me on the shoulder to ask what I needed.

I walked him through the problem and stood there for what seemed like ages while he clicked through my computer, eventually telling me he would have to put in a ticket to escalate it to the ultra IT guys. I had really been laying on the charm because I knew I looked good and sometimes it's fun to see people get dazzled, also it's nice seeing people walk away from interactions with you with a little glow about them. That was when another guy came and asked my IT guy why he was writing a ticket and insisted he could fix the problem. Second guy was absolutely flirting with me, which always feels nice. What was even nicer was when he started stepping over the line a little and talking to me in that special way where the concept of "pretty girl" makes you special, but a little less of a human. When he said "why do you need MATLAB anyway?" and I responded "oh, I'm studying neuropsychology its for brain imaging" he kinda blinked a little and some of the suaveness drained out of him. Sometimes I forget that when I dress super feminine people are nicer to me but expect less from me, and then I have an interaction like that.

Anyway, 2nd guy admitted defeat for the same reason as 1st guy and 1st guy went to work putting in the ticket for me. I made sure to be even more nice to him because he just had the other guy come in and try and show him up. He Aldo fixed the problem with my phone where it wasn't connecting to the University's wifi so hooray (even though I have a data plan, my phone company says I don't use my data enough in Germany to roam in the Netherlands, this means sometimes I get 2 seconds of very slow data before it stops all together. Unless I'm connected to wifi, I have no connection in the Netherlands.)!

When I got to the eeg lab my supervisor had me run through the rest of the experiment by myself while he watched from outside the sound proof cube on the camera. It took every ounce of my being to not fall asleep. I've decided I'll be coming to campus on Monday to attend the lab meeting in person and then stay the night at former Italian roommates to then go to my meeting on Tuesday. My supervisor told me to come to his office early on Monday if I wanted and I 100% am. That man is responsible for the entirety of the rest of my grades and I need him to like me. Plus some one on one face time could be good for figuring out my thesis.

Back home, I cooked and ate an entire veggie pizza before I joined the dnd game which was fine. I'm still trying to figure out my character a little.

That night, I had a bit of a freak out and spiraled about my future. I had this moment while I was washing my face at 1 in the morning where I just couldn't stop crying with all the soap on my face. I know this is coming from me not being occupied enough and also from being in my 20s but jesus.

Interesting day!

[running-in-the-dark]

I'm sitting in the waiting room at the psychiatrist's office now. it's interesting how different this is to the other one I went to. there, they asked the patients about their medication and any illnesses etc. at the reception desk - so everyone in the waiting room could hear. here, they make you fill out a form - you know, like every other doctor's office 🙃 there was also only one person in the waiting room - at the other one there were three of us when they opened and more people kept coming in, and I had to wait for ages.

anyway, this place seems much more... professional. but I'm still really, really scared tbh. I hope it'll be better than last time 😭 I mean, that was so bad that it'd be hard for it to be worse... I'm trying not to get my hopes up though.

- okay, so, it was... fine? just... fine. not bad. not great. just alright. which I'm okay with. I've got another appointment in January for an EEG and then I'll know if I really have to do an MRI (the other guy said so but didn't tell me why, and I won't do an MRI if it's not absolutely necessary. he said what that guy wrote doesn't sound like it's urgent, just that there was something a bit unusual, and he'll be able to tell me more after the EEG).

he doesn't do talk therapy so all he'll do for now is keep prescribing me my meds since they work pretty well for me. I'm okay with that, and while he wasn't the nicest person I've ever met or anything, he was polite and friendly and he didn't make fun of me so that's a win (which is a bit sad because that should be the bare minimum, but 🤷)

[deadmomjokes]

The “My body and brain are weird and nobody knows what or why” saga continues.

For the last 6-8 months or so, I’ve been getting intermittent “radio skips” as I’ve started calling them. Things will be happening, like people talking or I’m listening to a song on the radio, and suddenly it sounds to me like a little chunk got deleted. Like a skip on a record or old CD player. Suddenly the song is a bit further along than it was, without any kind of pause. As in, if the line is “Cover me in roses”, and one of these skips happens, for me it’s “Cover mRoses.”

It doesn’t happen every day that I’ve noticed, but then again, it could be happening all the time and I just don’t have auditory cues around all the time so I’m only noticing it some of the time. But I also started noticing it when walking, and, terrifyingly, while driving.

Obviously, this is not good.

So I go to the doctor and she’s like “come again?” And the best we can figure is it might be absence seizures, so she refers me for an EEG. After 4 months of fighting the medical system, all while walking around possibly spacing out of existence multiple times a day while caring for a tiny human and being forced to navigate the city in a rolling metal deathtrap, I get said test on Monday.

Which is good.

But.

For some ungodly reason (which I know is a very good reason, medically speaking, but still deeply horrifying) it’s required to be done while sleep deprived. Literally the words she said to me, “you do have to be sleep deprived.” No more than 4 hours of sleep in the 24 hours prior, she says. No caffeine or even chocolate, she says. All like it’s totally normal and not at all my own personal version of hell. I become a non-functional, emotional, panic-stricken wreck at anything less than 7 hours.

The only upside to this is that I’ll have literally all night to get some of my writing done, assuming I don’t spend the whole time curled up in a puddle of my own tears. (Two guesses which is more likely ;~; )

At this rate, I’m almost hoping it is some kind of epilepsy so I at least come out of this ordeal with a solid answer instead of having to do it all over again for a specialist who might then insist on adding some other heinous form of torture in the guise of a ‘routine’ medical test.

Anyway, fun times, cherish your sleep because you never know when a doctor is going to literally prescribe you a night of “Stop That”. And then proceed to slap an electric squid on your head and make you watch blinky lights for a while.

[simplekeikaku]

Learning tricks you can do with no prep time that actually work

Hi, I’m an older student who’s returned to school and is having to learn for the first time in my life how to study! I’ll write a separate post on note taking/revising methods that are working for me, but the following are the fastest and easiest tricks I’ve found to boost retention and efficiency. Some of them sound silly, but trust me, I’m a former 4.0 student who never had to study to get perfect scores when I was young and used to judge people for using some of these strategies. As my course load increases, I learn to value them more and more. Remember, the student who looks like a dork but gets perfect scores is having way more fun than the cool asshole who’s failing. Get a new piercing if you need to look cool, but study hard either way.

TIP 1

Utilize color psychology. There’s no need to make it complicated. The only tip from this article I’ve tried so far is to write in blue ink rather than black ink, and it works. It actually does boost concentration and retention.

TIP 2

Take advantage of aromatherapy. I know this sounds crazy. Buy or make a diffuser necklace and drop lavender and/or rosemary essential oil into it every morning. It will look like a fucking wizard amulet, so if that’s not your vibe, just wear it under your shirt. It needs to be in contact with your skin for proper heat transfer anyway. Aromatherapy positively affects mood, EEG patterns of alertness and math computations. Dig through the research if you want, but it will be faster and easier to just give this one a try. I’ve found rosemary oil in a diffuser necklace relieves headaches, helps me concentrate, and as a neat bonus, keeps mosquitos away.

TIP 3 

Take some brain vitamins. Sounds like I’m selling snake oil, but if you’re suspicious, consider that I’m not making any money off this. This is what I use, and because it is way too expensive, I take a sale sticker off an item of similar weight, place it over the bar code, and go through the self checkout line at a local grocer who carries it. I paid $3.99 for my last bottle and my food stamps covered it because it rang up as discounted almonds. I noticed quicker concept acquisition as soon as I started taking it which was sustained as long as I was on it, disappeared as soon as I stopped taking it, and reappeared when I started taking it again. It could be a placebo affect, but I don’t care as long as it works.

TIP 4

Medically induce relaxation if it doesn’t come naturally to you. You can’t learn very well if your body thinks you’re going to need to run from lions any second now. The first two weeks of this term were hell on my nerves, and I got really behind in all my classes because I got such intense anxiety whenever I sat down to study. For those of you with diagnosed anxiety disorders reading this, yes, I do understand what anxiety feels like -- in high school I had an eating disorder and such severe anxiety surrounding food that I could not swallow food if someone was looking at me, and if I tried to eat where people could see me my hands would shake so hard that my food would fall off my fork before I got it to my mouth. I know what anxiety feels like. I’m not bullshitting you. Anyway, these overpriced chocolates they sell at Whole Foods contain L-theanine, magnesium, and chamomile. You could probably find just about any supplement with the above ingredients and it would work, this is just the one I’ve been using lately. It takes the edge off. If you’re rolling in money, see a naturopath or head to an IV lounge for a magnesium push, but be aware that’s going to produce a very pronounced effect. Last time I had a magnesium push I fell asleep immediately and did not move until morning (no, I did not sleep on the exam table, I did it myself at home). I also really like MetaRelax but it’s expensive. These lavender oil pills work too, but they will make you burp and all your burps will smell like lavender.

All these things in combination have helped me go from feeling insane to feeling in-control and capable when it comes to keeping up and getting good scores in my classes. If I run across anything else that works well for me, I’ll be sure to share that as well.

[toonerdyandiknowit]

Hardware Part 3

Honestly, this whole series is a hot mess. But by god I’m gonna finish it.

Tony X Reader (Possible smut in future chapters)

Warnings: Mention of hospital, cattle prod ?

You weren't sure what Tony had done, but things with the team had calmed considerably.

In the past week you'd been invited to dinners, breakfasts, movie nights, and game nights. It had been fun, the atmosphere was much more relaxed and you found that you were actually enjoying the company of most of the group. There was however an underlying source of tension.

Every now and again something would be said, and suddenly all eyes would be on you, just for a moment, before moving away with a quick change of subject. Whether it was Nat asking Clint about his latest arrow heads, or Steve making a joke of something Sam had done on mission, there would be an uncomfortable pause as everyone seemed to simultaneously remember that there was an outsider in their midst.

You. Because despite your powers, and despite the fact that you were also living in the Avenger compound, you were an outsider. You weren't an Avenger, and had made your opinion clear on the matter. Clearly, this still bothered them.

Whenever these moments of charged tension arose, you'd made a habit of excusing yourself to the labs. You didn't want to be the cause of anymore arguments.

So you ended up spending a lot of time with Tony and Bruce. With Tony, you mostly helped tinker in the mechanical bay, cracking jokes and trying to describe what all his toys sounded like when they spoke to you.

In fact, Tony had begun singing your praises. Your abilities were making you invaluable to his research, and you'd even managed to fix a few of his experimental weapons. Several of which were now being used regularly by the team.

Tinkering in the lab, bantering with Tony as you made amazing new tech that could help save people...it felt pretty good. Good enough that you'd actually started considering asking if you could stay once SHIELD was done with you.

Maybe you couldn't be an Avenger, but you could still help out in a way that didn’t make you want to run for the hills?

Tony's attitude to the whole situation certainly made things easier; the casual flirtation and sharp wit peppered with innuendo made time fly, and you found yourself spending more and more time there. Surrounded by tech which often looked more like lumps of metal with random wires poking out, the damaged walls, and the abysmal organisation, that was when you felt the most relaxed.

You had managed to have that talk about boundaries, though it hadn't exactly gone according to plan. Rather than looking abashed, Tony had laughed, asking if you'd liked what he'd picked out. To your horror, you'd returned to your rooms later that night to find three new romance books piled on your bedside table, with another winky face post-it stuck to the cover of the top one. The post-it had been strategically stuck across the hip bones of the cover-model, giving the illusion that all that kept your gaze from seeing everything was a yellow, winking sticker.

You’d discovered the cover model was actually wearing a loin cloth.

You'd taken the post-it down with you to the lab the next evening, and stuck it firmly to Tony's forehead. He'd laughed, giving you a wink before pulling you in to ooh and ahh at his latest gadget.

You knew that he often crashed on the battered sofa in the lab, a side effect of not being able to sleep, and once or twice you'd found yourself falling asleep down there too.

One time you'd woken up wrapped in his arms on the sofa. You left before he woke up.

With Bruce, you spent more time in the Medical bay. You'd always hated hospitals, the way they felt so sterile and lifeless, and the med lab was no different. When Bruce had gotten a look at your powers, he'd immediately decided that he was going to spear head the research into them.

This turned out to be a very good thing, you can't imagine what it would have been like if you'd have had to leave the tower everyday for these tests. They were often exhausting, and every now and again SHIELD would send a request through that made you uncomfortable enough that you were thankful you and Bruce had become friends. You would have lost your shit if a stranger had had to conduct some of these tests on you.

That was where you were now, feet swinging back and forth as they hung over the edge of the medical bed. Tony stood in the corner of the medical room, a large bucket overflowing with phones and small nick-knacks by his foot as he fiddled with his phone.

You were wearing what you liked to call 'experiment-chic' clothes, which had made both Tony and Bruce snort in amusement the first time they heard. Black leggings, a sports bra, and a loose button-up shirt made up the ensemble, which you'd chosen for it's comfortable feel and so it could be moved around without disturbing any wiring that may be attached to you for the day.

You reclined back on the bed slightly, the head having been raised so you were mostly sitting up, and rolled your shirt up so Bruce could get started. As Bruce started strapping the ECG and EEG wires to your body, you noticed his faint blush as you moved your shirt around to accommodate the tabs that needed to be stuck beneath your breast. He mumbled an apology as he stuck them in place, quietly reminding you that if you wanted a female nurse at anytime, to just say so. You smiled, poking his pink cheek as you joked that you were irresistible.

“Covered in wires and baggy clothes, yep, I’m the hottest thing in here, no nurse would be able to resist me.”

Flicking your eyes to Tony, you felt a jolt run through you to find him watching, his eyes hooded and hot as they tracked the small flash of skin revealed. His eyes flicked up to you, and the heat was gone, replaced by a cheekily flirtatious smile and a wiggle of eyebrows that made your snort. You must have imagined it.

"Alright, to be honest we've got a pretty good idea of how your powers work now, but there’s still two more tests to do. The first is we need to figure out just how far your powers can reach, the second is to see if there's anyway we can disrupt them." Bruce moved away to tap at a screen which hung suspended from the ceiling, pulling it round to point out a few things to Tony, who nodded.

Standing, Tony began placing a number of different gadgets throughout the room; in front of you, behind you, close enough to touch, far enough to barely see, hidden in piles of towels, in a medical drawer, there must have been about twenty small gizmos dotted around the room by the time the bucket he'd brought was empty.

"Now, most of what Tony's hidden are phones, but some are just old toys, handhelds and such. We want to see how far you can reach, if you can influence what you can't see, and what sort of a radius you have." Said Bruce, tapping at several screens as Tony stood next to him, flicking his attention between the screen and you.

You closed your eyes and nodded. Breathing in, you let your awareness creep out slowly, brushing past the closest gadgets until you could feel the gentle hum of every gadget in the room.

"Interesting, the electrical spikes in her brain should be an indicator of severe brain damage, I'd expect to see a seizure at the very least..."

"Yeah but remember the MRI? Her brain structure seems to have altered to compensate for the..."

You let their voices drift away as you sent out a simple order; come here.

The sudden rattling caused you to open your eyes as the gadgets pulled themselves out of every hiding place, scrabbling to you with legs made from wires and cogs and tiny processors.

You noticed that the gadgets Tony had hidden outside of the door about fifteen feet away, which had been the hardest to hear and get a hold of, but you had managed with relative ease.

"Alright, Sparky, I think we're onto something. I wanna try something new if that's ok with you?" Said Tony trotting over to perch on the bed.

"What?"

"Just a teeny, tiny, electric shock. I'm curious as to whether your powers may have some correlation to Point Break's, and whether the introduction of electricity directly to you body in an involuntary manner...."

"Alright, alright. Jeez Stark, I don't need the entire paper you're writing on it, hit me." You smirked as he nudged your shoulder with his own before hopping off to get a...

"A cattle prod?!" you yelped, twitching back against the bed. The genius, play boy, philanthropist, nut-job waved the prod back and forth cheerfully.

"Oh relax, it'll barely sting! It's not meant to hurt, just expose your body to an outside source of electricity to see if that will effect your abilities in anyway."

You rolled your eyes and held out an arm.

"Just get it over with, you lunatic." You wiggled you fingers playfully and waited for the inevitable pain.

Instead you felt the cold touch of metal on your arm, followed by a rush of pure energy that spread through your body and made you tingle down to your cells.

Popping your eyes open on a gasp, you looked at Tony and Bruce in shock.

"What was that?" You choked. You felt tingly and full of energy, like you could swim the Thames.

"I dunno but these reading just went haywire, trying reaching out again." Said Bruce, tapping frantically at several screens while Tony looked them over with wide eyes.

Without thinking, you reached out with your powers; wake up, do something.

For a beat, nothing happened. None of the equipment moved, or behaved in any way it shouldn't.

Suddenly there came a heavy thud from above you. Shouting, crashing, and gun shots rang out as the three of you looked at each other wide eyed.

"What the fuck?" You breathed.

[the-rational-mystic]

Bored of Meditation?

I get it, focusing on nothing or on your breath for 20 minutes every day doesn’t seem that appealing. Whether you’ve tried meditation once or committed to it for a year, there will be a stage where your meditation practise becomes flat-out boring. We all know that meditation is renowned as one of the most important ways to spend your time as it has the potential to open up many profound benefits for an individual, arguably more-so than anything else you can do in your life - so of course, I want to suggest a few approaches to help you relieve your festering boredom and encourage you to continue mediating.

I used to come out of meditations feeling refreshed and awake. However, after months of meditating, it started to sap my happiness, an effect that was completely counterintuitive with what meditation was supposed to help me with. Every meditation I finished, I came out of it feeling more drained than before; it continuously failed to produce the same sense of peace I used to feel; it was an endless sensation of boredom I couldn’t overcome. Eventually this boredom created a downward spiral of doubt and negativity that couldn’t be escaped by simply focusing on the breath.

Many meditators have said that if you meditate long enough, that stage of boredom will surpass. Meditation is, after all, used to recognise that we must accept the present moment as it is. I was skeptical this ever was going to happen - I knew I had to take a different approach.

So, here are my top 4 suggested ways I found to combat meditation boredom:

1. Visualisation Meditation: Your Peaceful Place

Visualisation is a technique you can use while you meditate. Rather than focusing on the breath, you can engage in a world of pure imagination, all in your own control. This technique is much more active for the mind - it seems to boost my creativity and ease my mind so much more than a regular breath meditation. I am an artist and visualising seems to easily slip me into a familiar state of flow as if I would when I am drawing or painting. You may be aware of the flow state yourself: it is characterised as a trance-like state, where you are in complete absorption in what you are doing (often what you love to do), resulting in a loss of one's sense of space and time, also known as being entirely immersed in the present moment. This meditative state is what we seek during meditation: it allows us to return to the source of our soul, or subconscious, just as a breath meditation would do.

My favourite way to visualise is to imagine the most peaceful place you can picture in your mind’s eye and try to imagine yourself exploring it in vivid detail. Personally, I like to play rain forest sounds aloud on my phone while I meditate and envision myself there using all five of my senses; hearing the birds chirping; feeling the moss in between my toes sinking in the ground; smelling the earthy humidity in the air; making out shapes and colours of the space around me in progressive detail as I peek here and there.

Over time, my personal space has grown in complexity: I have a small clearing where I go to connect back with my source. I have created a hot spring there with a waterfall, a small hut with pillows to get comfy in, a yoga mat to do yoga, an area for arts and crafts - I even imagine my favourite foods, or imaginary fruits that don’t exist to explore my sense of taste and smell. I bring what I love to life in this sacred space created in my mind and I encourage you to explore your own space with freedom and joy during your mediation, especially if you usually struggle to keep the mind focused on mundane tasks such as breathing.

If you are finding it hard to visualise, there are many guided meditations that describe a peaceful place for you, which is a good way to hone your skills in visualisation. Once you are a skilled visualiser, I strongly advise you to try this technique without guidance and find joy in creating exactly what you want to create to be the next focus of your meditation, have fun with it and explore! You start waking up wanting to meditate and wondering what wonderful sensation you can conjure up next - you truly start to surprise yourself.

2. Other Visualisations: Spirit Guides, Past Life Regression, etc…

There are many videos you can find, particularly on YouTube, that claim to help you perform a past life regression or assist you with meeting your spirit guide for example. These videos all come under the same umbrella: they are all guided visualisation meditations and all are technically classified as hypnosis, as you are allowing someone else to guide your subconscious. Hypnosis allows for a certain degree of control, as it is your mind that is imagining, not the hypnotists’. Self-hypnosis, on the other hand, allows for full control. Arguably, hypnosis and self-hypnosis both seem to induce the mediative state that is accessible using breath meditation. Although both methods allow for this state, I feel it is more effective when you perform the visualisation on yourself once you’ve become skilled at it because the sensations or descriptions that come up in your meditation session will seem a lot more personal to your own subconscious and hence bring you a greater sense of peace and connection. 

I often like to branch off into other ways of using visualisation once I’ve first arrived at my peaceful place during meditation. Other methods of visualising include past life regression which can help you learn more about the situations you faced in your past life memories and you can use for guidance by comparing it to you present life’s journey to help find the best solution. You can also do inner child work, where you visualise yourself comforting a younger version of yourself and bring up past memories to relive, in order to help shed yourself of the ego’s defence mechanisms, built up to defend subconscious emotional inner child wounds. 

Meeting your spirit guide is also a very useful visualisation, as you can ask your guide to come forward for comfort or advice when you find yourself to be troubled at any point in your daily life outside of meditation. I also enjoy meeting my spirit guide regularly to just chill together while I am in my mind’s peaceful place. Some say spirit guides are the mind’s visual representation of your intuition and others may tell you they are genuinely real spirits. Either way, experiment with the concept of having a spirit guide and see intuitively what works for you best.

(Art by Janie Olsen)

Many people put off these techniques because they believe it is all just imaginary, they see hypnosis or self-hypnosis as mutually exclusive to the meditative state or believe it can’t actually help as effectively as meditation where you focus purely on the breath. In my opinion, visualisation is just imagination, but people often underestimate the power imagination has - it is literally our ability to tap into the vast imagery hidden deep in the subconscious, timidly waiting to be experienced. Hypnosis or self-hypnosis are often portrayed in a bad light as well - they are seen as something completely separate to experiencing a mediative state. Contemporarily, there is not enough research to distinguish whether they are practically the same thing or not, but I believe they all come under the same umbrella. My advice would be to take what I say about the effectiveness of these techniques with a grain of salt and try to experiment with it yourself - all I know for certain is that it has had a very profound effect on my life, just as much as breath meditation used to have on me and perhaps even more so!

3. Open-eye Meditation

There are many ways to meditate through out your day. My favourite and most flexible technique I have learnt is to focus on the space between objects as you do you daily routine and to be aware of not only the space in front of you, but also the space behind you. By shifting your awareness to inhabit that space, you are moving out into something much bigger than the limits of your ego mind. The more you move your awareness outward and into the universe, the more you spend time noticing the subtle beauty in everything you see, unlocking your potential to be fully present and at your highest spiritual potential.

In the book, “The Open-Focus Brain” the authors engaged in conducting experiments on volunteers to test what relaxation method was most effective at producing the most phase-synchronous alpha and measured this by monitoring their EEG. Alpha waves are one type of brain wave that predominantly originate from the occipital lobe during wakeful relaxation with closed eyes. Some were asked to visualise a peaceful scene, look at colours, try different fragrances, etc. But none seemed to produce more than a mild alpha-enhancing effect.

As soon as they asked, “Can you visualise the space between your eyes?” A high amplitude of alpha was produced immediately. The same significant increase in alpha brain synchrony was monitored after asking similar “space”-related questions which described “objectless imagery” like “Can you imagine the space between you ears?” and so on. One Eastern mystic wrote that it was important to “attain a state of mind in which even though you are surrounded by crowds of people, it is as if you were alone in a field extending for tens of thousands of miles.” The Japanese have even coined a philosophy called ‘Ma’, which is the ability to see the space between objects as well as the objects themselves. Surprisingly, it’s one of the least known techniques, yet appears to be one of the most beneficial - more research is needed!

Shifting your awareness to the space between objects is one open-eye technique and very efficient for helping you with mindfulness. You can also eat mindfully, by first appreciating where the food came from, how it has been developed over time and what others had to go through to bring it to your plate, etc, before you start eating. Appreciate the smell, the detail on the food and the colour which will help immerse yourself in the present moment. Take smaller, slower bites where you actually take the time to appreciate the texture in your mouth and the taste. Practise mindfulness like this with all the sensations of all your five senses throughout your day, not just at meal time, and you will find your sensory world will strikingly come to life. If you have a constant awareness of your own thoughts and feelings developed through being present and mindful, you can easily decipher and notice which thinking patterns serve you and which ones need replacing.

4. Yoga

Yoga, Tai Chi or any exercise that operates through sequences of bodily movements that are interwoven in coordination with the patterns of the breath are forms of meditation. Yoga is mostly seen as a physical exercise across the Western world but in Indian traditions it is considered much more than physical exercise; it has a meditative and spiritual core. It can also make your meditation practise much easier if you do it directly after a physical practise, as it imposes your awareness to shift into the sensations felt in your muscles and breath rather than the ego mind, creating a much more comfortable starting point to meditate.

Incorporating all four or even a few of these different types of meditation into your day-to-day routine may be enough to completely replace breath meditation if you loathe it that badly. Personally, when I started using all four techniques, it made breath meditation a more approachable and a lot less of a boring practise for me and I began to find it as peaceful as I did back then once more!

Confused or have desperate questions about this blog post? Feel free to send a message and I will be happy to give advice or clarification as soon as possible. 

[takeeachdayonebookatatime]

Triple f day [flashpoint fanfiction friday]

(In a heartbeat)

Part 4 (Extra caffeine)

Staring sam and jules featuring the team

Ps I am just a fan and found most of this medical info on google and made up/exaggerated some of it for the story.

Greg : pov I went to the coffee shop before work and got everyone coffee. Sam wanted a mocha one, ed likes a dark roast, wordy like regular coffee, and spike likes medium roast, jules loves the double double cream no sugar but since her injury she is only allowed to drink decaf so that is what I got her the guy was in a rush.

Jules : pov the coffee tasted so good it was definitely not decaf. I told Sam and after 5 minutes he was super nice and let me finish it. I bet he called dr scott before he said yes. The day was coming along great no hot calls. So we worked out, did some restocking and repelling which was fun. I had a headache so a member from team 3 handed me some Excedrin migraine relief. We also did some close quarter combat training and sparring 30 minutes later and I had to pee. Sam followed me saying he was concerned because my heart rate was elevated. I told him maybe the coffee did it.

Greg : pov sam phone was beeping and he said it was because jules's heart rate was elevated he followed her to the bathroom to make sure she was okay 5 minutes later and we heard a commotion over our coms/mics. Sounds like something is very wrong with jules. Me and the rest of the team ran over as fast as we could.

Sam : pov. After Jules peed she said she feels funny. I manage to catch her before she Falls down. I lay her on the floor while the rest of the team arrives. I start to check her vitals. when all of a sudden she starts Jerking, and is having some form of convulsions she is also crying out loud before losing consciousness. Greg has winnie call the medics her pants are also wet. Even though she just peed. I put her in the recovery position. While on the phone with the medics I tell them her symptoms and medical history.

Ed. Once the medics arrive she starts to come to but seems confused after returning to consciousness. The medics give her some oxygen and put an iv in her arm. Sam told them her vitals and how her heart rate is elevated; they said this type of episode is usually triggered by something.

Wordy : pov they asked sam if she ever had a seizure before and asked for a walk through of her day which he did. It was so scary seeing her on the floor like that.

Sam: pov i told them her coffee this morning was wrong it was regular not decaf and she also had a headache. They said the coffee could have caused it but they were not sure she would need more tests at the hospital. The medic could not give her anything except the anti seizure meds.

Since they thought it was a type of seizure. Her heart rate was still elevated. The medic also asked what type of headache stuff it is she took, I said it was Excedrin migraine relief. He said a side effect of the medication for people with heart problems. Is fast heart rate since it has two much caffeine, and on top of that the coffee had a lot of caffeine. They loaded jules into the ambulance who was still kind of out of it. They gave her some fluids in her iv. They also attached her to a heart monitor. Dr Jeff was waiting for us at the ER in Trauma bay 2 he performed an ecg ultrasound to make sure her heart was okay. He said everything looks the same. He also wanted an eeg done so he called neurology. They told him they could do one in 20 minutes and then do a brain scan if that was okay. The neurologist was waiting up stairs for us so he could perform the test since it was kind of important. Jules who was still out of it a little was put on the bed the nurse attached the leads on to Jules's head. And the neurologist started the test monitoring her brain waves, 40 minutes later and he has the results. He says having a headache affects your brain waves and showed up on the test, same with the coffee. She would need to be retested to make sure it is the caffeine that caused this episode because none of the usual stuff triggered a seizure in her. Her brain scan came back good. After Dr Jeff intravenously gave her some meds to lower her heart rate. She was moved to the icu after being in the waiting room for a while the team came over to visit it was now 6. I ate some food and jules was also more alert now and asking what happened I told her everything.

Jules : pov

Sam said I had a nonepileptic seizure at work. They think it was the caffeine that caused it. I was monitored all night. The next morning I was told Dr Jeff had scheduled me for a Electrophysiology Study this morning, I was wheeled in the ep lab and put on a bed then the nurse injected a sedative into my iv to relax me. The nurse also gave me a shot of local anesthetic to numb the area, and cleaned it. The cardiologist Dr Jeff made a small needle puncture into my arm and blood vessel with a small straw-sized tube called a sheath. It was inserted into my artery/vein then gently guided several specialized EP catheters into my blood vessel through the sheath and advanced them to my heart. The video screen showed the position of the catheters. I started to feel some pressure but Jeff said that was normal at the sheath site. He sent small electric pulses through the catheters to make my heart beat at different speeds which felt weird. He was trying to see if a fast heart rate triggered my seizure. The special catheters picked up and recorded my heart rate. Dr Jeff said the fast heart rate right now is not triggering a seizure so that is a good sign. After I was moved to the recovery room. I slept most of the day. Sam said the hospital food is gross. Dr Jeff took off my oxygen mask in the afternoon.

Sam : pov jules ate her usual food for breakfast, lunch and dinner the team came by to visit after shift I told Greg she has an eeg tomorrow to see if the caffeine caused it. Ed said Donna filled in for her today and she would also be tomorrow. The dr let jules watch a movie before bed. It was the next day today and her eeg scan jules was so nervous. They put a bed next to the chair I would be sitting in with jules at the first sign of anything wrong she would be transferred to the bed. In the neurology suite, Dr Jeff had set up all of the heart monitors for jules. I sat down and he started to hook her up to the heart monitors and he also gave her a regular coffee. She was laying in my lap since it was comforting to her. The neurologist started to attach the leads to her head and he made sure the wires were out of the way. 1 hour later and nothing happened other than her elevated heart rate. They decided to try the Excedrin migraine relief even though she did not have a headache. 30 minutes later and the monitor is starting to go off on the eeg machine, they managed to move jules to the bed in a few seconds before the nonepileptic seizure hit she is crying out loud and jerking around the neurologist managed to inject anti seizure meds in to her iv and the convulsions stop before she loses consciousness. He turns her into the recovery position. She is all wet so a nurse cleans her up. 2 minutes later and she is starting to come out of it she is a little confused again. The nurse puts an oxygen mask on jules. The neurologist takes her for another brain scan and dr jeff gives her medication to help lower her heart rate. Later on Greg comes by with the team to ask how her test went and I tell him everything. They stayed for a couple of hours. Dr Jeff wrote on her medical file to never give her Excedrin migraine relief when she has coffee in her system. It caused her to have a seizure because of her heart condition which elevated her heart rate to go too high.

[ghostofasecretary]

so the pain feelings are probably the easiest and most grounded, let’s have those first 

it really, really annoys me that i have chronic pain. i mean, yes, chronic pain is annoying, but i am annoyed at the specifics of my chronic pain because fibromyalgia is a...complicated diagnosis at best, one i am not sure really exists at worst, and one i would rather throw myself into a fire than get slapped with again.

(possibly do not read this if you are diagnosed with fibro, i think your pain exists and effects your life but i don’t quite think mine is and have Feelings about fibro as a diagnosis that i can’t assess and in this post i make some statements that may be distressing. if you’re sensitive to people dismissing pain, even if it’s their own pain, uh, maybe just skip this one)

i think the pain of other people i real and my own is not, sometimes, which is really stupid and i don’t agree with it, but there the thought is, being a thought.

legitimate vs illegitimate pain is one that is often framed through the lens of sexism and while that is probably reasonable, it also makes me curl into a little ball of dysphoria. i don’t want to think i was effected by sexism while i ran the medical gauntlet, and even if i was i don’t...ugh. sorry. no. i don’t want to.

fibro is basically the diagnosis for “we don’t know what’s wrong with you and you’re probably crazy and/or whiny and/or Don’t Real.” i’m not even sure it’s better than no diagnosis. also i am crazy, it’s on my chart, i don’t...i don’t want another thing that makes me more likely to be dismissed.

in my junior year of high school (well, from August to...April? stuff tapered off around the end of February) i had headaches that ranged from irritating to extremely distracting and mildly painful every single day. i say “mildly“ painful because i have had several severe migraines in my life, and while the aggregate suffering of daily aura and varying forms of pain in my temples may have been equal to the multiple days where i would have to be lying down in a dark room that was quiet as we could possibly make it, but even that didn’t quite help because my heartbeat was too loud, the daily experience was...not that bad. i also had some other symptoms that sucked!

these may have made the aggregate That Bad, idk. i was also pretty suicidal at this point, which kind of clouds my memories.

i was really nauseous pretty much constantly. i had aura pretty much constantly. i got diagnosed with chronic daily migraines, although they were atypical.

my hips and knees hurt a lot. my back hurt, my neck hurt, my shoulders hurt. sometimes i didn’t feel like i could walk well at all and i limped. i sat down often. my hands hurt and writing got painful for the first time. i was very tired.

i did some really stressful things in junior year that were made a lot worse by having headaches constantly and being tired and in miscellaneous pain and feeling like i was going to throw up. i had a really bad night one time where everything in my body was pounding and i ached and cramped and felt like i was on fire and also had a migraine i would class as a Real Migraine, complete with high-key pain and horribly present nausea and blackouts and floating dots. it was really hard.

i had a bunch of tests done re: headaches, including an EEG and an MRI. i asked for a full panel of bloodwork because i did not know what was happening and whether there was a cause. (fibro does not have a known cause, although it is sometimes speculated to be “stress” or “mental illness.” thanks, medicine.) there was no detectable underlying cause, but i did get some helpful medication after a lot of trial and error and several months of waiting. by several months i mean about half a year, but, well. what can you do.

(also, i had SO MUCH ANXIETY about diagnosis and i both was terrified of having RA or lupus or cancer or something identifiable and i desperately wanted something fixable. i also had FUN FUN FUN ANXIETY about being a Bad Patient, about whether asking for bloodwork and being upset over not having an underlying cause made me look like a hypochondriac, about whether the fact that i didn’t exercise as much meant i was Destroying My Health even though exercise hurt like a motherfucker and made every part of daily life difficult, etc, etc)

senior year was much less bad, pain wise.

headache meds really helped my other symptoms! yay! it’s also possible i developed a better pain tolerance*? i did have noticeable and distracting pain while typing during senior year but a carpal tunnel diagnosis is not terribly useful and trying to get diagnosed and not getting anything would probably have crushed me.

going to a chiropractor was moderately helpful but also painful, so...eh?

exercise was really, really not. it’s supposed to be, although the studies used to support that are kind of sketchy, but it was not helpful. it might be helpful now but i would not bet on it.

(one time in junior year i tried to stand up and pace around for an hour, to see if i could do it. i wound up having to lie down in bed for four hours. lying down because of Pain sucks and it feels so stupid and shitty and boring, and i knew i probably shouldn’t have stood for that long while it was so uncomfortable but i wanted to see if i could. i could, barely, but it was not worth it. and it’s so stupid, i feel so petty, i stand up for seven hours every day now and i don’t hurt that much, why did i...? surely it couldn’t have been that bad, surely i was making it up.)

sleeping more did help a little.

* i don’t feel like i developed a better pain tolerance but it might be worth noting two things.

one, after a while i got incredibly fed up with noticing my pain and all the stuff on the net about fibro being psychosomatic and not having any reason to feel bad aside from my headaches which also didn’t have a Real ReasonTM, i decided to ignore pain. pain? what’s that? i don’t have that. banging my elbow makes me ache for days? lol, no it doesn’t. it...i mean, i think it helped. not thinking about my pain All The Time defnitely helped, although the Denial might be less than great.

two, even though i really do feel like i have a shit pain tolerance my feet were literally bleeding because of my shoes in DC and i did not take any action about this until K and R told me to. it hurt, but not, like, a lot.

possibly i have a better pain tolerance.

...

anyway. recently during my work as a barista, my hands and wrists and forearms have been quite annoying. my wrists keep sparking when i pick up milk cartons or shake whip cream and i have to do those things many times during the course of a day. it hurts to close my hands and they’re usually very stiff but probably not clinically stiff. my tendons seem...unhappy...but fuck if i know. i sleep in wrists braces every night and have for years, i ice my hands and wrists at least once a week, typing is still hella painful and i don’t draw or sew very much anymore and i cannot shake the conviction that there is Nothing To Be Done and also that i am feeling my nerves dying every day. which. uh. not great.

(and also - my ankles hurt all the time, i stand up for seven hours a day, what do you expect? my back hurts, so what, everyone’s back hurts. sometimes my knee wrenches but idk, man, it does that.)

i can’t tell what’s a reasonable, measured reaction, what’s abject denial, and what’s overwhelming anxiety and desperation to have anything that isn’t The Fake Special Snowflake Disease For Special Snowflake People.

according to the Mayo Clinic, “See your doctor if you have persistent signs and symptoms suggestive of carpal tunnel syndrome that interfere with your normal activities and sleep patterns. Permanent nerve and muscle damage can occur without treatment.” uhhhhhhhh

tingling and numbness have occurred for the past two and a half years, although they’ve gotten much worse recently. i haven’t been woken up because of it, but, like. if i woke up every time i was in pain i would be awake a lot. weakness hasn’t really happened yet. pain is, y’know, kind of a thing.

i’m vaguely worried that i could have more things ala tendinitis but no way am i going to think about that too hard.

options:

continue ignoring everything. this one looks very stupid but i am tempted. if i think i need carpal release surgery i could try to get it then, otherwise i’m pretty much doing okay on prevention and am doing decently at ergonomic support. if i get told to ice my wrists or something i will scream

go to a doctor. a diagnosis would probably make me feel better but also what if i don’t get one, and there isn’t much to be done anyway unless i need surgery which i do not think i do. if i have tendinitis i might get a steroid shot, but really, i don’t think i do? i don’t want to think about it, i am so tired of thinking about my shit body, i don’t want to

go to the chiropractor. this looks like a nice middle balance and i could ask about carpal tunnel in a less serious environment and it might help, but uggggh, why can’t i just...continue ignoring everything. “permanent nerve and muscle damage” sounds serious but not being able to stand without being in a fuckload of pain sounded serious to me in junior year and here we are, with awesome headache meds and a dubiously effective pain tolerance.

at what point does pain interfere with my life? when i notice it? when i start dropping things? when i can’t hold a pencil? idk, man. i d fucking k

oh, yeah, and another thing, my headaches have been..sort of a thing lately. at this point i’m going to have to get a freakin anti-headache earring like it’s a sigil to ward off a demon and/or i will have to get botox shots every three months like a soccer mom desperately sneaking in to the doctor’s office to make herself feel just a tiny bit better about her miserable life and wrinkles, because obviously a 40 year old showing signs of age is A Sin Against Beauty And An Affront To Nature

(note the increasingly bitter and jaded tone of this post. do i sound hysterical yet)

pain is very stupid and i am SO ANNOYED

....probably i should schedule a chiropractor appointment. i shall pester my mom about that now

[brightlotusmoon]

Sneak Peak: The fifth “Lifegiver” story

Sneak peak of my TMNT fanfic “Oxygen And Spirit: Across The Universe” Part of a series that started with “Mikey The Lifegiver” which is on AO3 and FFnet and also here. Not connected with my other TMNT fic series, “Cold Fire Rising”

 Spirit And Oxygen: Across The Universe

Part One, Earth and Oxygen

“No, you’re not listening to me.” Don cradles his head in his hands and huffs, second cup of coffee halfway consumed. He tries to kick under the table for emphasis, but there’s no Mikey to kick him back.

“At least finish your bacon and then talk,” Leo pleads, “and then you can go back to his room and sit morosely on his bed.”

Sighing, Donnie throws his head back, wishing to science that he could just make it translatable. “Okay. Okay, I’ll start again. See…I created this holographic program. In which you and the holographic images can interact. You punch them, they punch you. Got that?”

“Sort of,” Raph says.

“Close enough. All right. So, you know that huge, gigantic tunnel that Mikey and Raph have been painting murals all over? The one Mikey’s been secretly using to train his skills outside the lair without you knowing?”

Leo sucks in a breath. “Wait, what?”

“…oops. Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it.” Donnie is feeling more and more snarky. “It’s just…you know the place, yes? That’s all you need to know.”

“We know the place.”

“Well, that is where the holographic projectors have been, and for the last two weeks, Mikey has been using it to improve that raw potential we’ve all been insulting him about. He keeps begging me to invent stronger opponents to test him. It’s been quite fun.”

“Yes, and what does that have to do with the gang war we waded into that resulted in Mikey lying in bed unconscious since yesterday?” Raphael snarls.

“Nothing…maybe a little.” Donatello sighs again. “Remember those moments when the three of us were down, and Mikey was still standing, and he went into literal full ninja warrior mode, silent and stealthy and faster than we’ve ever seen him? And the only reason he fell was because one giant bulky asshole slammed his head into an air conditioner corner, sliced open his thigh with a sword, and broke bones around his knee.”

His brothers nod, grimacing.

“The reason he was able to fight like a demon three times his skill was because he’s been feeding his potential. With me. Using holograms. Guys, he’s…growing up. Okay? He really is better than all of us combined. He just never got the chance to let it out. But with our…current circumstances…he forced himself to.”

Leo and Raph are staring at the kitchen table, pushing around their eggs and hashbrowns.

“We were really harsh with him before the battle.” Leo sounds petulant.

“Now, now,” a voice says, “Don’t with the guilt again.” And Karai folds her arms, leaning against the cabinet closest to the doorway. “I cooked that with love, boys, eat up.”

Raphael can not stop a vicious glare at his scientist brother. “Why you, though? Why’d he confide in you only?”

Donatello shuffles. “Mmmaybe it’s because I don’t hit him over the head as much? It’s because when he messes around in my lab it’s because he really is interested in what I’m working on…” As he trails off, Raph begins to breathe heavily. As he does so, Shinigami comes up next to him and begins to massage his shoulders.

“I had him in my arms,” Raph whispers. “He was babbling nonsense. His head was bleeding and his leg was bleeding and his knee was broken and he was panicking. He kept saying my name and he kept saying ‘bonfire water balloon skies’ and I didn’t--”

“Seizure, remember?” Shinigami murmurs. “His brain took a heavy injury and it caused severe aphasia before he fell unconscious. Not to mention blood loss. None of it was anyone’s fault.”

“I was hurt and I couldn’t get to him. I could’ve…I would’ve…”

He is cut off by Shini’s long fingernails digging into the base of his skull, pushing his head forward as she continues the massage. “Shut up, O Great Protector. He was holding his own, so was Karai, so was I. We all made the mistake of being distracted. Mikey got hurt. If any of you continue to blame yourselves, I’ll show you what my namesake really means.”

Shuddering, the three turtles scrape their plates clean.

...

Donatello is back in the lab, mixing more nutrient electrolyte solutions into IV bags, preparing a large bowl of cool water. He walks slowly across the lair, nudging Mikey’s door open with his shoulder.

April is sitting on the edge of the bed, wiping a wet cloth down the pale, motionless figure lying there, while Ice Cream Kitty leans forward in her bowl that is sitting near the pillow, doing the same with her tongue and paws. Mikey’s pallor is still awful. Leo and Raph donated all the blood Don would allow without them going into shock, but it had been just enough. He slides carefully to the table set up at the bedside, deposits the bowl and bags, and begins changing the IV bag before April even notices him.

“How long did you sleep last night?” she asks casually, wringing out her cloth and plopping it on the table next to the old bowl.

“Enough.” He adds a dose of Ativan to keep seizures at bay and to keep Mikey relaxed, then begins to palpate his bandaged head, trying to feel for the depression and skull fracture at the right temple.

“Tell me it was more than four hours.”

“Yes, April, it was more than four hours.”

She relaxes after an awkward pause, and goes back to massaging Mikey’s right hand. “Casey is on his way with more supplies from the school infirmary. Should we still worry about getting antibiotics?”

“Hopefully not. Has he moved at all? Anything? Anything at all?” Donnie tries to not sound desperate, but he catches the sad look April gives him.

I don’t want pity, I want my brother to be okay.

“No response to anything,” she says softly. “He’s pretty much shut down for the duration.”

Donnie’s gut drops and freezes a little. Okay. Okay. But he really really needs to look at brain activity. They don’t have the proper equipment but he can probably build something. He can’t ask their human friends to steal anything like a pricey EEG headband, but an EEG is the only thing he can think of. Perhaps he can build one, or even modify the machine he kept using on April, at least it shows something in the brain, right? As he dribbles and sponges cool water over his little brother’s plastron, he keeps thinking. He keeps thinking.

“Donnie?” April seems very close now, right next to his face, and he jumps when he realizes she is. “You’re thinking very hard about something. Can I help?”

Donatello glances at her, then at Mikey’s head, then back at her. “Oh. Ohhh. April! Yes! Yes you can! Um. Can you...can you look into his mind? You know, his brainwaves?”

She blinks. “I think so. Probably. Yeah. What am I supposed to look for?”

“Responses,” he says eagerly. Lights. Anything, anything that would indicate he’s able to react to stimuli, external or internal.”

“You mean...to make sure he’s still...still there.”

Don’s head bobbles. “Exactly.”

She takes a deep breath. “I think I can handle that. Anything for Mikey.”

Donnie bites his lip. It feels like one of his mantras lately. Anything for Mikey.

Anything, Mikey.

[chanceodekirk]

Brainwaves into Sound waves

This week's readings are of particular interest to me regarding brainwaves. It's neat to hear the story of how Alvin Lucier was introduced to brainwaves and how he incorporated them into his works. His first introduction to brainwaves was by the scientist Edmond Dewan. He used brainwaves in his piece ‘Music for solo performers in 1965’  To my understanding he had various instruments rigged up to trigger when he would have alpha brain waves picked up by the EEG. He then would transcode this to activate an array of drums and a tin can and a couple other instruments I believe.  

The performance sounds like a foley of rain hitting cans and tin roofs in a thunderstorm. One of his other pieces ‘Music on a long wire’ sounds almost alien and cosmic space noise. It seems as if at times you can make out music. It even sounds like music in an echo is coming down the wire, weird. It’s very surreal at ethereal. Like much of Lucier’s performances. It's these reasons he was not liked so much by his early contemporaries.  He was a music teacher but, exploring realms that were more rogue than then the traditional musical heard at the time. He found joy in inspiration from John Cage. Which who attended Luciers show ‘Music for solo performers.’  The funny part is that Lucier dedicated the performance to John cage who through talking to Lucier helped him suggest the idea in the first place. This is something that Lucier notes as inspiring, the person he looks up to help him create the first steps towards the piece.  

Alvin Lucier is a pioneer in many ways with his original technological performances in early tech days and one of the first to use such technologies for music. It's funny how he struggled to fall into the path of defining himself as a composer. He is but on on such a grand experimental level that has blazed trails for many. I'm so thankful he chose to step outside the box and brave the storm, he is a legend. I can't wait to do more research on him when I have time, and hope to build a installation similar to ‘Music on long wire’, for fun at school one day. I also have my own Interactive Brainwave Visual Analyzer and can use it to play music with my brainwaves. I love this kind of research and technologies. Brainwaves are something I have been doing my own personal research on for some time and have incorporated the use of EEG technologies into my art.

[missspringthyme]

February 6th, 2024

Productive day today! I set my alarm for 7 to try and reset my sleeping patterns, and it kinda worked. I got up at 9! I'm still working on implementing the routine I want, but we're making progress. I'm hopeful that my Utrecht/Amsterdam trip will be a good reset instead of a derailment, though, so we'll see, and I'm going to try and start taking my meds again. If I do though, I'm going to have to be careful because I've been weirdly thirsty lately. It feels like no matter how much I drink, I always feel a little bit dehydrated. What I wouldn't do for a yellow or cucumber Gatorade right now.

The business casual fit for today included a blouse I thrifted that was handmade in Vietnam. I really like it, but I feel a bit self conscious wearing it. I don't know why, but at least by wearing it out in public at least one time it's helped me break the seal. I also decided to do eyeliner today because I was wearing an all Grey outfit and I felt like my face needed some more contrast. Additionally, my acne is awful right now and I sometimes overcompensate with make up when I feel self conscious. This was a bit of a decision for someone who doesn't wear eyeliner normally and currently lives in a region of the world where practical and subtle are prized over "fun", so I decided to wear a pair of my glasses to compensate. I picked the green ones because the brown ones felt too warm for the outfit.

At my faculty, I met up with my former Italian roommate because she had agreed to be a participant in the eeg study. We got there a little early so she ate a burrito while I responded to my little sister's questions about when and where my train would be arriving. After 1pm rolled around, we headed upstairs to my supervisors office. My former Italian roommate has never done a psychological study before and she was surprised that I've been a participant for a lot. While we waited for the Greek girl to come, my supervisor and I talked about why psychology students make up the majority of participant pools of psychology studies. She asked if that was good, which of course it isn't but what can you do? (Participate in science kids! It's a civil duty!!) We headed upstairs to the lab and got my former Italian roommate ready. The booth is very crowded with 4 people, but that's the price of learning. As I predicted when I was the participant, I found it much harder to be the researcher than the participant. Several times I had to fight falling asleep while I attempted to entertain myself without making too much noise. You try being perfectly still and quiet in a sound proof cube and rhythmic tones.

In the middle, I got up to go to the bathroom. Partially because I had to and partially so I could get a break. The bathroom was weird and only locked from the door leading into the hallway, which took me a minute to figure out. I also noticed that the entire time I had a white sunscreen cast on my lips and that was very annoying.

After we finished, I told her I'd meet her downstairs after we finished up our meeting. My supervisor showed up the eeg readings in MATLAB and gave us some samples to look through on our own time. I appreciate that he's going slow, but I worry this is a situation where he's going to spend too much time teaching us how to visually identify blinks by the amplitude of the wave and then brush past the actual difficult analysis bits. We'll see if my prediction comes true.

I do have a confession, I kinda lied to my former Italian roommate. She really wanted me to come over to her house but I knew if I did there I'd be there until late at night and I'm having enough trouble getting to bed on time as it is. So instead I told her that I had errands to run so I didn't have much time. This is partially true because I needed more shampoo and conditioner and muesli, but DM closes at 8 not 5. This led me to adding a stupid lie in the middle of the truth which was that I had a package I needed to pick up. This is better because there's more of a strict time limit, but also worse because she then asked me what I ordered. Fuck. So, being the good liar I am, I crafted a lie out of something that very easily could have been true. There's this card game called Marrying Mr.Darcy that I really want to get my sister as a present. She loves Pride and Prejeduce, and I think she would find it funny. I put it in my list of Christmas gift ideas, but realized it would be great as a birthday present too. Unfortunately it wouldn't have arrived on time and shipping to Germany is expensive, so I didn't order it. This game also has expansion decks, so I told my former Italian roommate that I accidentally ordered an expansion deck instead of the game so whoopsie guess I'll just wait for Christmas. I wish one of my knee jerk instincts wasn't to lie, and I wish I wasn't so good at it. (Or do I?)

Anyway, instead of going to her house we opted to walk around downtown for a bit. It was extremely windy today and I hadn't really dressed for the weather because I had stupidly assumed that the nicer weather we'd been having would continue. What's funny is the last time I was in Germany around Karneval it was during reading week and I remember being so amazed by how sunny and warm it was compared to Scotland. I don't know if I've become more of a wimp or if the weather was just incredible in February 2019. Maybe a bit of both. We talked for an hour or 2 before I said goodbye at the bus station. She keeps reminding me to bring a towel because the hostel probably won't have one, and only stops when I show her the reminder I've put in my phone.

Back home, I pick up my shampoo and conditioner and muesli (and pretzel and lemonade). I really wish someone could just tell me what hair products to buy, because I get overwhelmed everytime. I just keep trying out new shampoos hoping I'll know when I've found the one, but if I'm honest the closest I've come was the love, beauty, and planet one but purely for their scent. Very thick, almost spicy lavender. It's incredible and has been slowly vanishing from store shelves, which I very much dislike. This time, I'm trying a volume and "illuminate"(?) Shampoo, so I'll write an update if my hair is incredible. One thing I'll say for the US, they understand that you need shampoo and conditioner bottles that aren't the size of a thimble. €10 for 2 bottles that fit in one of my tiny little hands should be considered a crime against humanity.

I ate my pretzel as I walked home (2nd thing I had eaten that day besides breakfast) and found myself behind a mother and her kid. Kids make me really happy, and I always try and listen in on what they've got to say when I'm passing by. Instead though, today the only thing I caught was his mother telling him that whatever jumble of words that had just spilled out was a very good question. I feel like "that's a good question" is a lot more earnest in German. In English, it has some spite mixed in.

At home, German American told me that she overheard that a very popular German youtuber is moving into our building. Neither of us had ever heard of him, so we watched one of his more recent videos and were confused to say the least. Incredible (coughexpensivecough) production value but baffling plot. I had pasta tonight to use up the sauce in my fridge. Tomorrow I'll have to remember to make my vegan poke bowl again so I use up my fresh ingredients. Channa masala will have to wait until I get back. Things were also a little more light in the kitchen today. I really miss the group dynamic we all used to have when I first moved in, but things were good today. Everyone had some of my mochi and I had some of German Americans Japanese KitKats while she circled things she wanted in the kaufland magazine we had received in the mail. Looks like next time I take the train, I'll be stopping to buy chocolate cream cheese (??)

Right as I was getting ready for bed, T called to tell me some fantastic news! He talked to his Chem professor and he's got some really good leads on being able to start doing research soon!! I'm so ridiculously proud of him, he deserves the world. A full day today.

[jerrytackettca]

Top Traits Happy People Have in Common

The pursuit of happiness is more a choice than something that occurs by happenstance, but there are verifiable traits that those who achieve happiness tend to share.

In 2010, in a study titled "Eavesdropping on Happiness,"1 researchers equipped nearly 80 college students with an Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), which randomly recorded snippets of ambient sounds taken while the participants went about their daily lives.

Every 12.5 minutes, the EAR recorded 30 seconds of sound, which allowed the researchers to figure out if the participant was alone or talking with others, and, in the latter case, whether the talk was small talk or more substantive, deeper conversation.

The study revealed intriguing insights into how conversations and small talk weigh in on happiness. What's more, in 2018, researchers followed up on the study, recording new snippets and learning even more about the intricacies of what makes people happy.2

More Meaningful Conversations Make People Happier Than Small Talk

Do happiness and well-being relate to the amount of small talk and meaningful conversations in your life? The 2010 study found a strong link, with less small talk and more substantive conversations linked to increased happiness.

For purposes of the study, small talk was defined as "uninvolved conversation of a banal nature," in which only trivial information was exchanged. A substantive conversation was defined as one in which meaningful information was exchanged. The researchers wondered:3

"Is the happy life full of shallow, happy-go-lucky moments and trivial small talk or full of reflection and profound social encounters? Both notions exist — the happy ignoramus and the fulfilled deep thinker — but little is known about which everyday life is actually associated with greater happiness."

It turned out that less alone time and more time talking with others was linked to higher well-being. But happiness levels rose even higher when there was less small talk and more meaningful conversation. According to the study, compared to the unhappiest participants, the happiest participants spent 25 percent less time alone and 70 percent more time talking.

However, while talking, they had one-third as much small talk and twice as many substantive conversations.4 It could be, then, that making an effort to have deeper conversations could be a key to increasing happiness:

"Together, the findings demonstrate that the happy life is social rather than solitary and conversationally deep rather than superficial … On one hand, well-being may be causally antecedent to having substantive interactions. Happy people may be 'social attractors' that facilitate deeper social encounters.

On the other hand, deep conversations may actually make people happier. Just like self-disclosure can instill a sense of intimacy in a relationship, deep conversations may instill a sense of meaning in the interaction partners. Therefore, our results raise the interesting possibility that happiness can be increased by facilitating substantive conversations."

Follow-up Study Also Finds Meaningful Conversation Is Associated With Happiness

In a follow-up study, researchers used data from the original sample along with a larger, more diverse data set, which included breast cancer survivors and their partners, recently divorced adults and adults who meditate.

The study again revealed moderate associations between life satisfaction and the amount of alone time, conversation time and substantive conversations among the subjects.5 Meaningful conversation increased life satisfaction in virtually every group they studied, but small talk was less impactful, showing little effect one way or the other.

"We replicated that people who spend a lot of time alone are less satisfied with their lives and have lower well-being," study co-author Matthias Mehl, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, said in a news release. "People who spend more time interacting and have more meaningful, substantive conversations are more satisfied. The happy life is social, rather than solitary, and meaningfully so."6

Further, while small talk wasn't beneficial, it wasn't decidedly negative either. The researchers even suggested it may have a place in leading to more meaningful conversations. "We all understand that small talk is a necessary component to our social lives," Mehl said. "You cannot usually walk up to a stranger and jump right into a deep, existential conversation because of social norms."7

Personality type didn't dictate the results, either, such that both introverts and extroverts stand to benefit from meaningful talks.

"We expected that personality might make a difference, for example that extroverts might benefit more from social interactions than introverts or that substantive conversations might be more closely linked to well-being for introverts than for extroverts, and were very surprised that this does not seem to be the case," researcher Anne Milek, a senior research scientist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, said.8

Positive Humor Helps Maintain Happiness

Along with regular, deep talks with friends and family, previous research has identified the four following personality traits as being associated with happiness:9

Extraversion

Locus of control

Self-esteem

Optimism

Researchers writing in Europe's Journal of Psychology took the findings a step further, revealing that people with these four personality traits are happier because they use positive humor in their daily life.10

"The happiness of 'happy people' does not depend on life circumstances. Rather, happy people seem to have personalities that allow them to find happiness even in the midst of adversity and challenging life conditions," the study noted. And humor, it turns out, makes an effective adaptive strategy to maintain happiness.

Not just any type of humor was beneficial, however. Self-defeating and aggressive humor styles were linked to less happiness, while positive, self-enhancing and affiliative humor did the opposite by helping people cope with difficult circumstances. What's the difference in the styles of humor?11

Aggressive humor is used as a means of teasing, criticizing or manipulating others, and may be used as a way to demonstrate superiority over others

Self-defeating humor may be used to avoid confronting problems or dealing with negative feelings, and may make fun of your own weaknesses

Self-enhancing humor is used to maintain positive psychological well-being by means of distancing yourself from adversity

Affiliative humor is used to entertain others, which helps enrich the quality of social relationships

A positive sense of humor, encompassing both self-enhancing and affiliative styles, is indeed another common thread among people who call themselves "happy." The researchers explained:12

"[O]ur findings suggest that people who are high in extraversion, internal locus of control, optimism and self-esteem have developed adaptive strategies of using humor in daily life, which in turn help make them happy. They experience greater happiness because they are better at finding strategies to regulate their emotions, and the habitual use of positive humor is one of those strategies.

Happy people may be adept at using positive humor styles as a means by which they frame or appraise life events to form positive, self-affirming views of the self. Indeed, people protect their psychological well-being by using self-enhancing humor as a means of reframing stressors in a more positive, light-hearted way."

Kindness, Generosity and Gratitude: Additional Indicators of Happiness

There's a close relationship between being kind and being happy. Happiness levels increase when people count their own acts of kindness for a week.

Further, kind people experience more happiness and have happier memories, with one study suggesting "happy people are more kind in the first place and … they can become even happier, kinder and more grateful following a simple intervention [counting their acts of kindness]."13

As for why kindness makes people happy, this is still being explored, but it's known that your brain produces feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters like serotonin when you're kind, and kindness helps you to build strong relationships with others, fostering positive feelings and stronger, more meaningful social interactions all-around.

Giving to others is also linked to happiness, and generosity is certainly one form of kindness. People who agreed to spend money on others made more generous choices as well as had stronger increases in self-reported happiness compared to those who agreed to spend money on themselves.14

Those who agreed to give to others also had more interactions in brain regions linked to altruism and happiness. Like generosity, gratitude can also produce measurable effects on a number of systems in your body, leading to better sleep, more positive emotions and more, including beneficial effects on:

Mood neurotransmitters (serotonin and norepinephrine)

Inflammatory and immune systems (cytokines)

Reproductive hormones (testosterone)

Stress hormones (cortisol)

Social bonding hormones (oxytocin)

Blood pressure and cardiac and EEG rhythms

Cognitive and pleasure related neurotransmitters (dopamine)

Blood sugar

Sleep May Be an Overlooked Part of Being Happy

Most research into happiness has focused on its social ties, but research has also found that people who sleep well are more satisfied with life, even after controlling for other factors like personality.15

While sleep has long been linked to mood, researchers also suggested that people who sleep poorly are more likely to have a zero-sum view of happiness, which causes people to engage in more social comparisons and savor their positive experiences less, ultimately leading to less happiness.

"As many societies become more competitive and market-oriented, sleep is easily regarded as a waste of time (and money). However, sacrificed sleep may create a vicious cycle of making the world appear as a zero-sum competition, which aggravates interpersonal stress," researchers wrote in Frontiers in Psychology, adding:16

"What constitutes a good life? Many people in modern society may shove a 'good sleep' below other priorities, such as high status or income. However, our study suggests that this inconspicuous daily routine not only restores the body, but also elevates the mind's view of life."

Even the Happiest People Have Negative Moods Occasionally

Yet another study looking into the shared traits of very happy people found those at the highest level of happiness were highly social and had stronger romantic and social relationships than less happy people.17

In this case, the happiest people did not exercise more than the less happy people. Nor did they participate in religious activities more often or experience more "good events." However, they did tend to be more extraverted, more agreeable and less neurotic, and having good social relations was a necessary component.

It's important to note, too, that while the happiest people experienced positive (though not ecstatic) feelings most of the time, they also had negative moods on occasion. In short, it's completely natural to feel down sometimes, but happy people have ways of coping with negative emotions so they're able to turn them around and maintain a bright outlook overall.

Try This To Be Happier

If you want to be happier, research suggests putting effort into your social relationships, particularly nurturing those that provide deep, meaningful conversations, will pay off. Likewise, be kind and keep a running tally of your acts of kindness, no matter how big or small.

Be sure to get quality shut-eye each night, and practice living in the present moment, not focused on past regrets or future worries. Ultimately, however, the social component of happiness cannot be ignored. If you're feeling lonely or socially isolated, the following strategies can help you to make meaningful connections with others in your community, which will ultimately increase your level of happiness:

Join a club that interests you

Volunteer for a cause you believe in

Enroll in a class to learn a new skill or hobby

Create rituals of connection, such as calling a certain friend every Monday

Join a gym or sign up for a fitness class so you can exercise with others

Frequent local shops and markets, where you can build relationships with shop owners and other regular customers

Talk to strangers during your daily commute, at the grocery store and while walking your dog

Consider adopting a pet, such as a dog, which can provide companionship and a source of unconditional love, as well as act as an icebreaker socially

Move to be closer to your friends and family

Attend religious services or support groups

from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/03/07/traits-of-happy-people.aspx

source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/top-traits-happy-people-have-in-common

[paullassiterca]

Top Traits Happy People Have in Common

The pursuit of happiness is more a choice than something that occurs by happenstance, but there are verifiable traits that those who achieve happiness tend to share.

In 2010, in a study titled “Eavesdropping on Happiness,”1 researchers equipped nearly 80 college students with an Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), which randomly recorded snippets of ambient sounds taken while the participants went about their daily lives.

Every 12.5 minutes, the EAR recorded 30 seconds of sound, which allowed the researchers to figure out if the participant was alone or talking with others, and, in the latter case, whether the talk was small talk or more substantive, deeper conversation.

The study revealed intriguing insights into how conversations and small talk weigh in on happiness. What’s more, in 2018, researchers followed up on the study, recording new snippets and learning even more about the intricacies of what makes people happy.2

More Meaningful Conversations Make People Happier Than Small Talk

Do happiness and well-being relate to the amount of small talk and meaningful conversations in your life? The 2010 study found a strong link, with less small talk and more substantive conversations linked to increased happiness.

For purposes of the study, small talk was defined as “uninvolved conversation of a banal nature,” in which only trivial information was exchanged. A substantive conversation was defined as one in which meaningful information was exchanged. The researchers wondered:3

“Is the happy life full of shallow, happy-go-lucky moments and trivial small talk or full of reflection and profound social encounters? Both notions exist — the happy ignoramus and the fulfilled deep thinker — but little is known about which everyday life is actually associated with greater happiness.”

It turned out that less alone time and more time talking with others was linked to higher well-being. But happiness levels rose even higher when there was less small talk and more meaningful conversation. According to the study, compared to the unhappiest participants, the happiest participants spent 25 percent less time alone and 70 percent more time talking.

However, while talking, they had one-third as much small talk and twice as many substantive conversations.4 It could be, then, that making an effort to have deeper conversations could be a key to increasing happiness:

“Together, the findings demonstrate that the happy life is social rather than solitary and conversationally deep rather than superficial … On one hand, well-being may be causally antecedent to having substantive interactions. Happy people may be ‘social attractors’ that facilitate deeper social encounters.

On the other hand, deep conversations may actually make people happier. Just like self-disclosure can instill a sense of intimacy in a relationship, deep conversations may instill a sense of meaning in the interaction partners. Therefore, our results raise the interesting possibility that happiness can be increased by facilitating substantive conversations.”

Follow-up Study Also Finds Meaningful Conversation Is Associated With Happiness

In a follow-up study, researchers used data from the original sample along with a larger, more diverse data set, which included breast cancer survivors and their partners, recently divorced adults and adults who meditate.

The study again revealed moderate associations between life satisfaction and the amount of alone time, conversation time and substantive conversations among the subjects.5 Meaningful conversation increased life satisfaction in virtually every group they studied, but small talk was less impactful, showing little effect one way or the other.

“We replicated that people who spend a lot of time alone are less satisfied with their lives and have lower well-being,” study co-author Matthias Mehl, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, said in a news release. “People who spend more time interacting and have more meaningful, substantive conversations are more satisfied. The happy life is social, rather than solitary, and meaningfully so.”6

Further, while small talk wasn’t beneficial, it wasn’t decidedly negative either. The researchers even suggested it may have a place in leading to more meaningful conversations. “We all understand that small talk is a necessary component to our social lives,” Mehl said. “You cannot usually walk up to a stranger and jump right into a deep, existential conversation because of social norms.”7

Personality type didn’t dictate the results, either, such that both introverts and extroverts stand to benefit from meaningful talks.

“We expected that personality might make a difference, for example that extroverts might benefit more from social interactions than introverts or that substantive conversations might be more closely linked to well-being for introverts than for extroverts, and were very surprised that this does not seem to be the case,” researcher Anne Milek, a senior research scientist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, said.8

Positive Humor Helps Maintain Happiness

Along with regular, deep talks with friends and family, previous research has identified the four following personality traits as being associated with happiness:9

Extraversion

Locus of control

Self-esteem

Optimism

Researchers writing in Europe’s Journal of Psychology took the findings a step further, revealing that people with these four personality traits are happier because they use positive humor in their daily life.10

“The happiness of 'happy people’ does not depend on life circumstances. Rather, happy people seem to have personalities that allow them to find happiness even in the midst of adversity and challenging life conditions,” the study noted. And humor, it turns out, makes an effective adaptive strategy to maintain happiness.

Not just any type of humor was beneficial, however. Self-defeating and aggressive humor styles were linked to less happiness, while positive, self-enhancing and affiliative humor did the opposite by helping people cope with difficult circumstances. What’s the difference in the styles of humor?11

Aggressive humor is used as a means of teasing, criticizing or manipulating others, and may be used as a way to demonstrate superiority over others

Self-defeating humor may be used to avoid confronting problems or dealing with negative feelings, and may make fun of your own weaknesses

Self-enhancing humor is used to maintain positive psychological well-being by means of distancing yourself from adversity

Affiliative humor is used to entertain others, which helps enrich the quality of social relationships

A positive sense of humor, encompassing both self-enhancing and affiliative styles, is indeed another common thread among people who call themselves “happy.” The researchers explained:12

“[O]ur findings suggest that people who are high in extraversion, internal locus of control, optimism and self-esteem have developed adaptive strategies of using humor in daily life, which in turn help make them happy. They experience greater happiness because they are better at finding strategies to regulate their emotions, and the habitual use of positive humor is one of those strategies.

Happy people may be adept at using positive humor styles as a means by which they frame or appraise life events to form positive, self-affirming views of the self. Indeed, people protect their psychological well-being by using self-enhancing humor as a means of reframing stressors in a more positive, light-hearted way.”

Kindness, Generosity and Gratitude: Additional Indicators of Happiness

There’s a close relationship between being kind and being happy. Happiness levels increase when people count their own acts of kindness for a week.

Further, kind people experience more happiness and have happier memories, with one study suggesting “happy people are more kind in the first place and … they can become even happier, kinder and more grateful following a simple intervention [counting their acts of kindness].”13

As for why kindness makes people happy, this is still being explored, but it’s known that your brain produces feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters like serotonin when you’re kind, and kindness helps you to build strong relationships with others, fostering positive feelings and stronger, more meaningful social interactions all-around.

Giving to others is also linked to happiness, and generosity is certainly one form of kindness. People who agreed to spend money on others made more generous choices as well as had stronger increases in self-reported happiness compared to those who agreed to spend money on themselves.14

Those who agreed to give to others also had more interactions in brain regions linked to altruism and happiness. Like generosity, gratitude can also produce measurable effects on a number of systems in your body, leading to better sleep, more positive emotions and more, including beneficial effects on:

Mood neurotransmitters (serotonin and norepinephrine)

Inflammatory and immune systems (cytokines)

Reproductive hormones (testosterone)

Stress hormones (cortisol)

Social bonding hormones (oxytocin)

Blood pressure and cardiac and EEG rhythms

Cognitive and pleasure related neurotransmitters (dopamine)

Blood sugar

Sleep May Be an Overlooked Part of Being Happy

Most research into happiness has focused on its social ties, but research has also found that people who sleep well are more satisfied with life, even after controlling for other factors like personality.15

While sleep has long been linked to mood, researchers also suggested that people who sleep poorly are more likely to have a zero-sum view of happiness, which causes people to engage in more social comparisons and savor their positive experiences less, ultimately leading to less happiness.

“As many societies become more competitive and market-oriented, sleep is easily regarded as a waste of time (and money). However, sacrificed sleep may create a vicious cycle of making the world appear as a zero-sum competition, which aggravates interpersonal stress,” researchers wrote in Frontiers in Psychology, adding:16

“What constitutes a good life? Many people in modern society may shove a 'good sleep’ below other priorities, such as high status or income. However, our study suggests that this inconspicuous daily routine not only restores the body, but also elevates the mind’s view of life.”

Even the Happiest People Have Negative Moods Occasionally

Yet another study looking into the shared traits of very happy people found those at the highest level of happiness were highly social and had stronger romantic and social relationships than less happy people.17

In this case, the happiest people did not exercise more than the less happy people. Nor did they participate in religious activities more often or experience more “good events.” However, they did tend to be more extraverted, more agreeable and less neurotic, and having good social relations was a necessary component.

It’s important to note, too, that while the happiest people experienced positive (though not ecstatic) feelings most of the time, they also had negative moods on occasion. In short, it’s completely natural to feel down sometimes, but happy people have ways of coping with negative emotions so they’re able to turn them around and maintain a bright outlook overall.

Try This To Be Happier

If you want to be happier, research suggests putting effort into your social relationships, particularly nurturing those that provide deep, meaningful conversations, will pay off. Likewise, be kind and keep a running tally of your acts of kindness, no matter how big or small.

Be sure to get quality shut-eye each night, and practice living in the present moment, not focused on past regrets or future worries. Ultimately, however, the social component of happiness cannot be ignored. If you’re feeling lonely or socially isolated, the following strategies can help you to make meaningful connections with others in your community, which will ultimately increase your level of happiness:

Join a club that interests you

Volunteer for a cause you believe in

Enroll in a class to learn a new skill or hobby

Create rituals of connection, such as calling a certain friend every Monday

Join a gym or sign up for a fitness class so you can exercise with others

Frequent local shops and markets, where you can build relationships with shop owners and other regular customers

Talk to strangers during your daily commute, at the grocery store and while walking your dog

Consider adopting a pet, such as a dog, which can provide companionship and a source of unconditional love, as well as act as an icebreaker socially

Move to be closer to your friends and family

Attend religious services or support groups

from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/03/07/traits-of-happy-people.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/183283738771