#cutting contact

[furiousgoldfish]

abusive parents life plans:

step 1: have child

step 2: make child as miserable as possible, make sure they feel bad for every moment of their life, shame and blame them for getting born, costing money, being alive, for forcing parenthood on two innocent people, shame child for being in pain, groom them to be whatever the parents find convenient and easy to exploit

step 3: get upset when child cuts contact

[theclitisaliberallie]

Explanations

Time again to sit down with myself

Explain, like I’m a child, that: “you shouldn’t pick at scabs

Scabs are important because they let you heal

So while they’re uncomfortable

(much like an unread notification)

It’s better to leave them to heal

Because if you keep picking

Then they just keep bleeding”

I sit and nod, pointedly ignoring the soft ping my phone makes

As I receive a message

To answer would be to peel back the scab

And they have bled enough.

[aesops-boy]

If you’re struggling with the idea of cutting or decreasing contact with family members/friends, I want you to consider this perspective: You can do it because you love them. You can do it because you care about them. You can hope that your relationship will improve while stepping back and letting yourself be taken care of and prioritized for once.

Cutting/decreasing contact doesn’t have to be because you hate someone; it can be because you love them and want to have a good relationship while not letting yourself be the emotional/verbal/physical punching bag. I have at least one family member whom I love dearly, but I absolutely cannot continue to be the one doing the gross bulk of the emotional labor. I want her to become a better person (and I actually do think she’s capable of this because I’ve seen some of it and that she will), but not wanting to be consistently hurt, disappointed, and used as her personal therapist is not some big bad thing that makes me a horrible human.

I also need to grow and develop as my own person. I deserve to live happily and freely without constantly being drained by someone else. And you’re not wrong or bad or ungrateful or evil or terrible or anything else people might say about this if you do the same.

[mental-health-advice]

I recently cut off a friend (we are both close to 30) because she was draining me emotionally and refused to change her behavior when I addressed it, but now that time has passed I am still grieving this friendship and need to know if I did the right thing.

For the past 2+ years this friend has obsessively texted me from the moment they woke up until they went to sleep, almost every day. This was easily over 30 texts a day. We had been friends for a while when this started and she was going through a bad break up and trouble at our mutual workplace, so at first I thought she was just reaching out during a crisis. But it never stopped and it just became normal to me.

This person is not my closest friend by several people, but the texts became more and more emotionally intimate - just constant updates about what she was doing or feeling during the day - all of her emotional ups and downs. It didn't matter if I ignored the texts, they just kept coming to the point that while on vacation with my family they asked me to mute her because it was visibly "ruining" my time off.

I admit that I didn't realize how odd this was partly because this started during peak COVID when a lot of people, including myself, were isolated and reaching out more, and partly because it was flattering that someone seemed to care so much about my opinions and wanted to talk to me so much.

But she seemed to fixate on me more and more. She made a private twitter account and asked me to follow it - it ended up just being me following it and none of her "best" friends. She used this twitter to share even more of her emotions including intense emotional and sexual thoughts about people she wanted to date. She also began texting me pictures of journal entries and I didn't know how to respond.

I finally realized how one sided this relationship was when she cut me off in the middle of telling a story about a work-related milestone that had just happened and was really important to me because she wanted to talk about her upcoming first date with someone she met on an app. I sat on that feeling and decided to address it with her. I told her at a private lunch that I felt we had fallen into a pattern where she relied on me for emotional support and intimacy. And that I didn't feel she always considered my emotions or what I may be going through before messaging me. I told her that I was going through a lot at the moment (abusive boss, family illnesses - all things she was aware of) and that just because I don't express it the same way that she does that doesn't mean it's not taking a toll on me. I said that I was happy that she was finding joy in dating again, but I would like a boundary where we don't talk about the ups and downs of each date. I would be happy to meet this person when she wants me to or be there for her if there is something serious to discuss, but it is a lot for me to be there for all of the emotional ups and downs of dating on top of the other things she texts me about as well as my own personal struggles unrelated to her.

At first she apologized profusely and said she was being a bad friend, which I denied because she couldn't know that something is upsetting me unless I tell her. I just asked that in the future could she please consider my feelings or what I may be going through before messaging me. She then proceeded to ignore me in person for over a week, but would still text me about herself, never asking me about myself. This made me feel used and I started to ignore her in return.

However, I felt that I had to give her time to adjust to the boundary and asked to have lunch again to check in. She said she was avoiding me because by asking her to consider her behavior in the future I reminded her of our abusive boss (who has objectively and publicly lashed out at me in ways she has not experienced). She also said that I was invalidating her dating efforts because she only wanted to talk to me about it. She said that there are things she only tells me and her journal.

I apologized, but afterwards I just felt angry. I felt it was manipulative to compare me to our mutual abuser. If she didn't mean to be manipulative, then it at least demonstrated how she can't think about my feelings because she cannot see how much our boss has abused me and how that might affect my feelings separate from her. I didn't appreciate being compared to a journal, but I realized it was an accurate comparison. I feel that she has treated me like an inanimate object who should hold her feelings but have none of my own.

She kept messaging me - again just about herself, never asking about me. I responded but didn't give it the same energy as before to distance myself. I didn't try to engage with her in person but neither did she - she never asked to have coffee or lunch like we used to. I got the feeling that she expected me to make things better, but I didn't feel the need to do that work for someone who doesn't think they should have to think about my feelings - especially after I went through the effort to be direct about what was upsetting me.

I am mourning the closeness I thought I had in this friendship and the way it made me feel like my thoughts mattered. But the more I look back, the more I realize this friendship was about me being there for her feelings with very little reciprocity. I feel guilty, but I also don't think it's fair to be assigned as someone's caregiver. I wanted a mutual friendship, not to be a mom or therapist. I was on call for her emotions - and she expected me to be - for over two years. I asked her to be more considerate about my feelings and she couldn't do it for one week. But then the guilt says, did I ruin everything?

Hey there,

After reading your Ask I do not feel as though you were in the wrong for the decision that you made to cut contact with this friend at all. It is fairly evident that you did everything that you could have to ask her to be a bit more considerate to yourself and to also try to put a few boundaries into place. This is and was a really positive step to take on your behalf as friendships should not just be one-sided which is what it sounded like your friendship with this person was. With saying this though, it is quite normal to grieve the loss of this friendship (no matter if it was toxic or not) and to question yourself on if you did the right thing or not in the actions that you took. Try to be kind to yourself though, as I know how hard it can be with a one-sided friendship and how it can play on your mind and make you feel like you were the bad person in ending the friendship when in reality you were just doing what you needed to do for you and to enable yourself to work through your own life struggles to the best of your ability without being bombarded by someone with what they were going through as well. I guess what I am trying to say is that I personally feel as though you did everything right for you and that you acted in ways that you personally needed to at the time, and there is nothing wrong with doing this at all!

I really hope that this has helped a bit and please do let us know if we can help to support you in any other way!

I’m thinking of you and hope that you are going well!

Take care,

Lauren

[myownpersonalnotesapp]

Being alone is all fun and games until you get bored and start romanticizing your exes

[anonymousisnotavailable]

So, he unfollowed me on everything. It feels a little weird, and I have been feeling a tiny bit guilty since we last spoke. I haven't done anything wrong. I was polite and truthful. I did not just ghost him. I let him know directly, that I have no interest in meeting up with him. I don't feel the need to or particularily want to. There are plenty of reasons as to why, but he did not ask for an explanation. I had no intention of giving him one either to be honest. Not that I owe him one in the first place. And yet I somehow cannot help but feel a little guilty. Seems silly. Maybe it is. I don't regret cutting contact though.

[paintedcrows]

They're both autistic (and ADHD) 2 me

[bonetrousledbones]

fuck it since my birthday is in like one day i'm gonna use my birthday wish to tell y'all to look at the shit going on in southern Appalachia right now after Hurricane Helene. look at it and talk about it and spread resources about it like wildfire because nobody else fucking is and it feels like we're on our own out here.

there are people who are stranded in hazardous areas that are still safer than trying to leave by driving on the increasingly hazardous roads. i'm personally going into my third day without electricity at this point, and haven't been able to get any gas for a generator to even keep our fridge working. there are very few places with power or running water, and cell service has just barely been restored in the last hour. ground crews are working hard to repair things, but there are many, many areas that are entirely inaccessible that may not receive these fixes for several more days if not weeks. i'm afraid my own neighborhood might become one of those areas if repairs don't get to us soon, and since we're much more rural i have a difficult time trying to be optimistic about it.

we're very far inland. i guarantee you damn near everybody here was expecting a little more rain and wind like we usually get during hurricane season, if they even heard about the hurricane beforehand in the first place since most people only got about a twelve hour notice before landfall- after several major areas had already been flooded. our terrain protects us from most major weather events- most locals have never encountered a single tornado or legitimate tornado warning in our entire lives. nobody i've talked to or heard from about it seems to have had any idea that it would be this bad. everybody's wishing that they took it more seriously, but we've never, ever had to before. i've seen people comparing it to Hurricane Katrina and honestly i'm not sure if that's all too inaccurate. today while looking for a single working gas station i drove by a military helicopter parked in front of the elementary school i went to when i was little.

please for the love of god, talk about us. talk about the good memories you had here or the beauty of our mountains, and talk about how devastated we are as we watch historic structures, buildings, and entire towns get wiped from the face of the earth like they were never even there. stop dismissing us as uneducated hicks and rednecks and hilllbillies and fucking help us.

r/Asheville resource/updates megathread (Asheville is the largest city in western North Carolina)

How to set up disaster roaming for cell service

WLOS Live updates

Duke Energy power outage map

WNC Landslide Map

Hotels accepting locals

Emergency shelter locations

I live in western North Carolina so all of my own resources are centered around that. If anybody from the other impacted areas has additional sources they'd like to add, please don't hesitate to do so.

[grubbin22]

b&w au where everything is the same but emmet has a rocket launcher

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

Just received your print of the egg man speech in the mail, it was a gift for my brother who can recite the whole thing from memory. Needless to say he was very satisfied with the gift, and me and my siblings sat around it for 10 minutes cackling, till our mom showed up and we scattered. His room mates are jealous of it and want their own. 10/10 thank you <3

-----

sjfgjsfdhsfshd thank you! glad it could bring joy to your beloved gremlins

for the rest of ya, this is the print in quastion:

it looks like this

[mental-health-advice]

hi, i am feeling really lost right now because i cut out a person who i thought was only causing me pain and emotional distress but now that she's gone i feel like everything is shaken up, i feel super unstable, and i dont know where to go from here.

mostly because i cant figure out how to be my own person... like i relied on her and the 'exciting' and unpredictable emotions that came with her that my life without her feels dull and pointless?

she used to be my best friend... and i guess she still is or at least the part of me thats sick thinks so. and now that she's gone, going to the club or cafe dobt feel the same anymore, things i enjoy feel hollow and cold. I really just want to know how to feel... ok as just me again? i hope thats not too much to ask, im sorry if it is

Hey there,

It can be really hard when we have to make a decision that will ultimately better our lives. It can be hard because like you have noticed, it can leave us feeling unstable in a sense because you have gotten so used to that other person being in your life, even if they were causing you more harm than good in an emotional way. When we have had such a person in our lives it can just become habit to get use to it, like it’s our ‘norm’ and so consequently, removing that person from our lives like you have done can cause great pain and leave a sense that you don’t know who you are anymore without them being in your life.

With saying all this, I think it’s of upmost importance to acknowledge that what you have managed to do, even though it was really hard and upsetting for you afterwards, you did want you needed to do for you, and this is really good in itself. I know that with how you feeling right now that you may not be able to see this, but in time I hope you will be able to be proud of yourself for doing what you did as it really was what was best for you at the time.

I know that you mentioned that you don’t know ‘where to go from here’ (having cut contact with this friend) but I think you are stronger than you give yourself credit for! Yes, it will take time to get use to not having this person in your life, but try to be kind to yourself, allow you to get to know yourself again and just give yourself some time to just being your own person. Unfortunately, I cannot give you a single answer in how you can move on, but just try to take each day as it comes and try and take comfort and joy in the little things in life. Like the smell of flowers blooming, or feel of the wind flowing through your hair as you walk outside, the little things we all take for granted. I will not say that moving on will be easy, because it won’t be, but I can assure you that in time, you can and will feel happy once again and that you will be able to see yourself as your own person. It will just take time.

I really hope that this has helped a bit and please do let us know if we can help to support you in any other way!

I’m thinking of you and hope that you are going well!

Take care,

Lauren

[hephaestn]

Nate Mann as Robert 'Rosie' Rosenthal Masters of the Air (2024) — Part Six

[northescere]

as much as i love tendou with abandonment issues due to not having friends before and being terrified of them leaving him i believe we need to give more attention to wakatoshi with abandonment issues. i can't see his mother as the loving type. his father was probably his only pillar of emotional support and comfort growing up and when he moved to america, wakatoshi had all of that ripped away from him, thus the fear of the people he loves leaving him behind. i can imagine wakatoshi in tears grabbing tendou by the wrist as he's boarding the plane to paris, saying in a voice too broken for the man he appears to be that he doesn't want tendou to leave him.

[pippynsworld]

[painterofstars]

you own those hallways?

big thanks to:

pexels, for the hand pngs

national geographic for the tadpole and frog pngs, found in Take a Look Through Nature's Most Transparent Animals and What makes glass frogs transparent? The secret is in their blood.

wikipedia for the text screenshots, specifically from the articles on distortions, spirals, spiral galaxies, cognitive distortions and hallucinations

lastly the centipede is from nine inch nails' closer to god album