#from depression to disordered eating to financial insecurity

[dufflebagwitch]

Desperately wishing for more media that shows weight gain as a POSITIVE thing, we've been getting (slightly, not much) more media where being fat is at least somewhat neutral but truly I wanna see it be an actively positive thing, character gains weight to show their growth or that they're healing, character gains weight and is actively ecstatic about it, fat characters getting to be sexy for their fatness in a way that isn't meant to be subversive or a joke :(

[a-strange-inkling]

how were the two pregnancies of Chrissy? i have this hc that, it was a bit complicated physically for her... like, maybe her eating disorders created some deficiencies and she has to stay in bed just in case.

Hi! Great ask! 💕

I’ve always pictured that Olivia was the more difficult pregnancy, but the easier baby. Where Maggie was the opposite, easier pregnancy, but the more difficult baby lol

Olivia being her first pregnancy, and after almost two years of working on recovering from an ED was indeed complicated physically for her at times. She definitely was instructed to take it easy by her doctor, focus on her physical well being, drinking more liquids, higher calorie diet, bed rest and all that. She was very anxious of losing the baby early on. There was a point in her life she wasn’t sure she could have kids because she stopped having a consistant period during the end of her sophomore year.

Recovering from everything she went through was a full time healing process, which she worked on diligently to get better, but like anyone who’s been through an ed, ptsd, anxiety or depression will tell you, there’s good days and bad days.

Pregnancy brought so many changes to her body in ways that she was taught to avoid and resent. It brought back a lot of the memories of her abuse from her mother.

Physical intimacy was always laced with some anxiety and insecurity for Chrissy as well because of her body image issues, it took a lot of time for her to fully overcome that and it definitely flared up again when she was pregnant. She was worried she wasn’t attractive when she put on weight and started to show, because how could he when she wasn’t as tiny as she used to be? Of course Eddie was very assuring that he was near feral for her when she was glowing like a goddess and carrying his baby.

It was a very joyful and loving time, but there were struggles too. They were both young and dealing with their traumas. Also, Eddie had a big emotional breakdown when his dad suddenly reentered his life toward the end of her pregnancy, and she had to help him through his fears and his self doubt during that sensitive and scary time.

Maggie was not planned as we know 😂 and came at a stressful time in their life when they just moved to NY, but it was more of a good stressful. They had a bigger place, had more financial security, and were both more established when they had her. Also, it just makes such a difference when you’ve been through it once before. Chrissy was in a much more comfortable place with herself and her body, the anxiety of giving birth wasn’t as intense and Eddie was doing what he loved to do for a living now, so it was overall a less complicated pregnancy.

[drheidikling]

Common Triggers for Anxiety and How to Navigate Them by Heidi Kling Ph.D.

Anxiety triggers are specific situations or actions that induce feelings of fear, worry, and unease. Some triggers can come from within, such as medical conditions or excessive caffeine use; other sources could include significant life changes.

Moving, getting married, or changing careers are everyday stressors that may trigger anxiety symptoms in some individuals. Learning how to recognize and address anxiety triggers will help keep anxiety symptoms under control. Dr. Heidi Kling

1. Conflicts with Others

There are various causes of anxiety, such as disputes between people, from dealing with difficult coworkers or partners to an argument over finances or even having difficulty sleeping due to anxiety-inducing scenarios. Anxiety can quickly turn into fearful feelings that impair one's ability to cope effectively in stressful situations.

Heidi Kling PhD, points out that recognizing and managing anxiety requires working closely with a mental health professional. Psychotherapy techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure response prevention may help, while your physician may prescribe medication. Complementary therapies like mindfulness and yoga may help identify and address anxious thoughts and behaviors while developing coping strategies.

Certain circumstances can increase your risk of anxiety, such as childhood trauma or genetics. Significant life changes such as moving, marrying, and changing jobs often trigger feelings of inadequacy or insecurity; creating an action plan is often helpful in making them easier to navigate.

2. Negative Thoughts About Yourself

Personal triggers may include thoughts, memories, and sensations that trigger anxiety based on fears that something will go wrong or feeling judged by others. They could also indicate post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or specific phobias.

Conflicts between friends or family members are a frequent source of anxiety. At the same time, financial concerns such as high housing costs or difficulties saving for retirement can generate considerable tension for many individuals.

If you are experiencing anxiety, consulting a mental health professional may be beneficial in terms of both identifying triggers and developing effective coping mechanisms to combat them. A therapist can provide invaluable assistance by helping identify triggers and developing plans to cope with them.

Heidi Kling Ph.D., suggests that journaling can help identify personal triggers. When negative thoughts arise, catch them immediately and ask yourself whether the thought is realistic and helpful; otherwise, try replacing it with positive ones. Furthermore, practicing self-care includes eating a well-balanced diet, engaging in regular physical activity such as walking or yoga classes, restricting caffeine and alcohol intake, and getting enough restful sleep.

3. Money Issues

Stressful bills, debt, living paycheck to paycheck, or having an uncertain income can significantly raise your risk for anxiety symptoms like fast heartbeats, sweaty palms, and difficulty making decisions. Many who suffer from financial anxiety find relief through debt consolidation options or budgeting apps, as well as consulting with a financial advisor on developing an approach for getting out of debt.

Sharing financial concerns with trusted friends or family can put things in perspective, as keeping these problems to yourself may make them seem impossible and lead to depression, social withdrawal, and physical ailments such as headaches or stomachaches.

Heidi Kling Ph.D., highlights that when entering into a relationship, money discussions must be tackled early if one partner tends to save while the other spends; discussing these differences and agreeing on how you will manage finances together are paramount if tension and deep fractures in relationships are to be avoided.

4. Social Situations

Anxiety triggers can range from social gatherings or public speaking events to specific thoughts or behaviors such as caffeine consumption. By understanding their triggers, anxiety sufferers can avoid events altogether or take steps to prepare themselves.

According Heidi Kling psychologist., Negative life events such as divorce or the loss of a loved one can trigger anxiety. A stressful workplace or educational environment, high housing costs, and unsteady employment (particularly among marginalized communities), as well as living in an untidy or chaotic home, can all increase levels of anxiety.

If you're having difficulty with anxiety, keeping a journal may help identify patterns and recognize when anxiety emerges. Also beneficial may be talking to a counselor or therapist about them as this will provide valuable insight while teaching you coping tools and techniques to overcome your triggers. Lastly, know that you're not alone - community services and government offerings exist to support those suffering from their anxiety; for those experiencing more severe symptoms, it might be worthwhile to consider speaking with a mental health specialist for treatment options.

5. Public Speaking

No matter what your anxiety triggers are, you can take steps to manage them and learn to control your symptoms. An excellent place to begin is by identifying those situations that cause anxiety for you and developing practical coping skills, such as avoiding crowded places, restricting caffeine and alcohol intake, or changing negative thought patterns with psychotherapy. For added success, try systematic desensitization, which involves gradually exposing yourself to situations until they no longer trigger anxiety; mental health professionals trained in this technique can assist.

As per Heidi Kling Ph.D., occasional feelings of anxiety are expected; however, when they begin interfering with daily activities and have an adverse impact, seeking professional treatment is necessary. A doctor will first discuss your symptoms before performing a physical examination to identify any physical causes and before offering medication or psychotherapy referrals. You can get assistance through K Health! It's the first step toward living more effectively!

[azenari]

reo | 11.6.20

originally written for a teacher and a friend -- “You don't always get the dog you want, but you get the dog that you need.”

Thanks to some combination of nature and nurture, I’ve been a fairly high-strung, anxious person for as long as I can remember. Emotionally, I have a lot to work through when it comes to self-esteem, belonging, and neuroses/insecurity as it pertains to my relationships. I lost my mother unexpectedly at a young age and was the one who discovered her body when I came home from school one day. I have intense survivor’s guilt, and I’m constantly waiting for the floor to fall out from under me because I’ve been hyper-aware ever since that moment that it can happen anytime.

I struggled with depression for a number of years - mostly alone or with the support of other friends who were also struggling - and made a couple suicide attempts which, thankfully, did not succeed. I had some less-than-ideal experiences with psychiatrists because strangers put pressure on my father, a single dad and a widower, to seek professional help because I smiled and thanked them for coming to my mother’s funeral (which I thought was what she would’ve wanted me to do. I still think that). It took me years to come around to the fact that maybe I’d just seen the wrong therapists at the wrong time, vs. believing that therapy just wasn’t for me.

This shift in mindset occurred not a moment too soon, because after years of denial, I recognized that one of my closest personal relationships was and had been increasingly abusive (culminating in sexual assault). I developed and was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). At last, I went to therapy. This time, I was lucky to find someone who could help me - in her words, it was also because I was ready to be helped.

It’s been a few years since then, and while I’m not always successful at maintaining a healthy state of mind and body, I’m a lot better than I used to be. I listen to myself a lot more, for one. I’m working through the survivor’s guilt. I’m lucky to be married to someone I consider both a best friend and a soulmate, the latter of which I thought was more of a fairytale than anything else until I met him. I have trust. I have people and places I call home. I sleep and eat on a regular basis. I still challenge and push myself in life because that’s who I’ve always been, but in such a way where I can really feel the joy in doing it, rather than the dread of waiting for myself to fail.

Three years ago, I made a decision I knew I would always make someday, deep in my gut. I decided to get a dog.

I’ve always been a “dogs welcome, people tolerated” person. My family and I have been rescuing sick, lost, or injured animals since I was a little girl. When I was growing up, my best friend - and the only living being in the world I felt comfortable confiding all my thoughts in - was our neighbor’s dog, who was born and brought home the same year that I was. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever met a dog I didn’t love at first sight.

I was 23 by the time I’d saved the financial resources and created the infrastructure I thought I would need to support a dog. I was incredibly lucky to already have one - my husband’s dog, Nyx, who by that point was 2 years old and the absolute joy of our lives. Though she started as his dog, Nyx became our dog and continues to see us both as her parents; but she was his decision, and he brought her up with his own two hands (a Herculean feat for a 21-year-old navigating his first job) while I was still in school.

While I would’ve loved to adopt a bigger dog, my husband and I lived in a small apartment in Los Angeles and knew we didn’t have the space to support one, so we decided to look for another mini Australian Shepherd or Shepherd mix who would be a good companion for Nyx. I intended to rescue, so I followed a lot of rescues in the area, waiting for a puppy I could learn to raise myself. In the midst of all this research, I made the mistake of following a single breeder: A teacher with a family farm in Northern California who bred miniature Australian Shepherds and Italian Greyhounds out of sheer love for both, which I thought was such a hilarious combination that I wanted to follow their activities from afar.

A couple of months went by, and the teacher in Northern California posted about a new litter of mini Aussies on Facebook. She uploaded pictures one by one, and we followed along, trying to hold ourselves back - which became easy enough because one after the other, someone would claim the newest puppy in record time and ask to bring them home.

One day, she posted a picture of a puppy that was one of the smallest in the litter and frankly didn’t look anything like any other Aussie - or even dog - that we had seen before. When we saw him, even though it was technically just a photo, it felt like he was looking straight at us. I remember showing him to my husband (then boyfriend) and the first words out of his mouth were: “Is that our dog?” … Call it a gut instinct.

Knowing that we wanted to rescue and imagining that this puppy, like the others, would not have any trouble finding a forever home, we told ourselves that we would wait a week and see what happened. Usually in a matter of 24-48 hours, the dog would be spoken for. But for some reason… days went by, and no one came for the puppy.

I caved and sent the teacher a message.

After what felt simultaneously like a lifetime but also five seconds, I was flying to Sacramento to meet her and bring our baby home. I remember the moment when she gently placed him in my arms. It felt like something that had been empty in my chest for years was suddenly not empty anymore. I know people describe human motherhood as a singular experience, but as someone who had gone through life for years questioning whether she would ever form a permanent connection with any living creature - or have anyone or anything to come home to - I can’t imagine that the moment I have a child (if I’m lucky enough to have a child) will feel too different from the moment I held Reo for the first time.

I remember the first night as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. We ordered a crate beforehand, but a long and complicated series of circumstances led to me having to fly to pick him up the day before the crate would arrive. That night, he and I both slept on the couch - he with his body mostly in his carrier, curled up on a blanket that smelled like his siblings, with the door partially open to give him room to stretch and breathe - me haphazardly tucked next to him with one hand lightly touching his back just so I would know if something happened. He slept pretty peacefully, actually, but I woke up every 15 minutes in a panic, worrying that something would happen to him or that I would do something wrong or that he would disappear and this would’ve all been a dream. But he was there every time I opened my eyes.

Fast forward a few years later and Reo is, for the most part, a goofy, roly-poly force of nature who is incredibly loving to the people he considers to be his “pack”. He’s also... anxious and fairly high-strung (where have we heard that before?), especially around strangers - and especially if he perceives there to be a potential threat to his mother, who he seems to constantly worry is at risk of being attacked. God willing, I don’t think he’ll ever have to experience finding my dead body one day when he comes home from school; nevertheless, he seems to have inherited the lingering, irrational paranoia I developed from that experience.

I’m no different, really. PTSD isn’t something that truly goes away. At best, it’s dormant, manageable, something I’ve learned to appreciate as an indicator of when my body feels overwhelmed or unsafe. I’m still generally anxious, neurotic, and high-strung; and though I’ve learned to not let it dictate the way I live my life, I’m also still a little insecure.

I’ve gotten a lot better at hiding it from humans. But I’m incapable of hiding it from my dog.

Which brings me to where we are today. Like me, Reo is the way he is through some combination of nature and nurture. He’s always going to be a little anxious about life, and I only gave him more reasons to feel constant concern. We’re both too aware, too worried, too afraid of the million things that could go wrong at any given moment.

On the other hand - like me, Reo is also capable of change. And growth. And building trusting relationships with others, based on a shared understanding that you reinforce through time and practice until you slowly start to believe it might be real.

Reo and I have both learned to perceive our physical home as the only true “safe space” we have in the world. Despite our mutual love for adventure, fear of all aforementioned things that could go wrong keeps either of us from wanting to leave. After a lifetime of constant harassment from strangers (predominantly male, predominantly malicious, always a vivid reminder of abuse), I’m on high alert every time I leave the house, and that compounds when I bring him with me. My dormant PTSD symptoms seem to stir like sleeping lions as soon as we so much as swing open the door. For both of us, there are triggers lurking around every corner, waiting to scare us into giving up.

But if we continue hiding within the confines of these four walls, we’ll miss out on so many of the joys of life. And even if I could’ve reconciled myself to that type of existence, I don’t want him to suffer the same fate just because I’m terrified to set foot outside.

So we’re working through it. We’re fortunate to have a strong, loving, and patient support system. We’re fortunate to have the financial resources to ask for professional help. Recently, we met our “therapist” - a teacher and behaviorist who can understand and guide us both. Based on how our first day went, I think we both instinctively recognize that she’s the right person to help us, because she understands where both of us are coming from. To Jo: I don’t know what it is you went through, or what your triggers and traumas are… but even just from our interaction today, it felt like you could recognize my experience, especially in seeing how it manifested in my relationship with Reo. I realize we’re asking you to train me a lot more than we’re asking you to train him. I’m deeply grateful that you're still willing to do it.

I know it doesn’t seem like it when we’re out there, but I have a lot of conviction when it comes to this relationship. Of course, I think my body (easily triggered, hyper-reactive, always the most skeptical part of my ecosystem) has a hard time believing that we’re going to be okay. My mind has its moments; sometimes it thinks we’re going to be, sometimes it has to fight itself to remember what we’re working towards.

My heart, on the other hand, has remained hopeful through all of these experiences. It’s part of the reason I’m still here. And my heart really, truly believes that we’ll get there - we being Reo, and also me.

I’ve spent a lot of time wishing that Reo had better luck finding a mother. Someone who was sure of herself. Someone a little less traumatized, less anxious, less afraid… but the fact of the matter is he wound up with me. Instead of wishing that I could be someone else, I’m going to focus on being grateful that he came to me when I needed him most. I’ve done a lot of healing over the last few years, and we’ve both come pretty far relative to where we started. But we still have a long way to go.

For his sake, and my sake, I want to keep moving forward.

[firewvlker]

BASIC INFO

NAME: jason peter todd

NICKNAMES: jay, jaybird

ALIASES: red hood, robin, wingman, outlaw, nightwing, red robin, batman, arkham knight

AGE: 30

BIRTHDAY: august 16th

GENDER: cismale

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: heterosexual

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: heteroromantic

PRONOUNS: he/him

RELIGION: agnostic

SPECIES: mild metahuman

MARITAL STATUS: in a relationship with love quinn

LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: english, portuguese, french, german, chinese, italian, russian

ACCENT: american

FAMILY TIES

MOTHER: catherine todd

FATHER: willis todd, bruce wayne (adoptive)

SIBLINGS: damian wayne (adoptive), dick grayson (adoptive), tim drake (adoptive), cassandra cain (adoptive)

CHILDREN: tba w/ love quinn

FINANCIAL STATUS: upper class

PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES

FACE CLAIM: matthew daddario

RACE / ETHNICITY: white / italian, irish, english

NATIONALITY: american

HEIGHT: 6′ 4″

WEIGHT: 225 lbs.

BUILD: athletic

HAIR COLOR: black with a white streak

EYE COLOR: blue with a tint of lazarus green (from the pit)

DOMINANT HAND: ambidextrous

TATTOOS: tba

PIERCINGS: n/a

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: height, numerous scars (including an autopsy one), a “j” on his left cheek

LIFESTYLE

RESIDES: gotham city

BORN: gotham city

RAISED: gotham city

VEHICLE: red batcycle, black & red 2022 dodge challenger

PHONE: red iphone 13

LAPTOP/COMPUTER: acer nitro 5

PETS: german shepherd named gunnar

OCCUPATION: vigilante, businessman, amateur chef

LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: huge luxury penthouse apartment he shares with love

FAVORITES

LOCATION: anywhere that isn’t gotham

SPORT: hockey

SHOW: n/a

MOVIES: action

BAND: queen

ARTIST: johnny cash

FOOD: chili dogs

BEVERAGE: whiskey

COLOR: red

HEALTH

PHYSICAL AILMENTS: n/a

NEUROLOGICAL CONDITIONS: suicidal depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, ptsd

ALLERGIES: n/a

SLEEPING HABITS: awful, he has a very hard time sleeping and only gets a minimum amount

EATING HABITS: also awful, he’s hungry like 24/7

EXERCISE HABITS: he runs or hits the gym daily also has an insatiable gf so he gets plenty

EMOTIONAL STABILITY: 6ish

SOCIABILITY: introvert

BODY TEMPERATURE: cold-natured he died my dudes

ADDICTIONS: smoking but not really

DRUG USE: n/a

ALCOHOL USE: socially

PERSONALITY

LABEL: batman’s greatest failure

POSITIVE TRAITS: loyal, determined, clever, protective, strong-willed, pragmatic, witty, empathetic 

NEGATIVE TRAITS: emotional/unstable, cynical, sarcastic, insecure, temperamental, ruthless, possessive, arrogant

FEARS: the joker, death, letting bruce down, not being good enough, being forgotten, being a bad dad, never living up to dick, nothing.

HOBBIES: guns, reading, acting, fighting, paintball, smoking, cars/bikes, messing with his brothers (damian esp)

HABITS/QUIRKS: speaks with his hands, very neat – keeps everything clean, tba

LIKES: guns, his girlfriend, neapolitan ice cream, redheads, cars, motorcycles, music

DISLIKES: clowns, crowbars, criminals, being told what to do

EXTRA

ZODIAC SIGN: leo

MBTI: istp

ENNEAGRAM: 8w7 – the nonconformist

TEMPERAMENT: melancholic-choleric

HOGWARTS HOUSE: gryffindor 

MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic neutral

PRIMARY VICE: wrath/anger

PRIMARY VIRTUE: justice

ELEMENT: fire

[genderhawk]

Kaiser Poisoned My Brain (Again) Send Legal/Financial/Medical Help!

This is a fundraising post, I’ll add my other links at the bottom but if you wanna skip the read head over to paypal.me/genderhawk 

cw: medical procedures, bad doctors, eating disorder recovery and struggles therin, financial insecurity, mention of past suicidal ideation

tl;dr - I thought I got medical care, but it was medical harm followed by medical abuse.  Send money for food and self/pallative care while I fight kaiser into providing me functional medical treatment.

Peep the readmore for details...

On Christmas eve of 2020, I was in the emergency room for what I thought was a stroke.  Good news!  it wasn’t!  It’s actually idopathic intracranial hypertension which is usually treatable and often goes away at some point.  The medications most common severe side effect is tingling in hands and feet.

In fact, the most severe side effect of acetazolamide (generic for diamox) that most doctors know about is digestive distress.  Unfortunately for me?  Rare and barely confirmed side effects (to which I am prone, as flexeril and buspar before this have shown) included depression, loss of appetite, confusion, and malaise as well as all of the common and managable side effects.  

I thought I was dying, I wanted to speed it up.  I stopped taking the medication and within 12 hours I remembered what hope and joy and pleasure felt like, after a day my pain from Intracranial hypertension was back but so was my emotional stabilty, mental clarity, and happiness.

My second opinion today was rescheduled for friday, and I need to make it to an actual doctor without being coerced into resuming acetazolamide.  My vision, balance, stamina, and energy levels are all on the decline and my pain is only steadily increasing. 

How to help:

paypal.me/genderhawk gives me money for food, gas, rent, meds, and various self care needs on a card I can even use IRL with no fees on my end for friends/family

Wish list!  - https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2XGQ13SI2YJH4?ref_=wl_share

Gift cards to doordash are especially good for food, as I had the dashpass thing so that I don’t have to pay delivery

If anyone has resources for seeking medical care while insured, if insurance is unhelpful, in Northern California (Oakland/Berkeley centric) please lmk.

Anyone else have any experience with this diagnosis?  Please, lmk, I’m struggling

Signal boost, on tumblr or in private...  Or ask me to share off tumblr

[fuzzynecromancer]

Things have gotten worse since we last spoke

No, it’s not just the title of a horror novella.

I’m not doing great. I hoped the new antidepressants would help, and maybe they are, slowly. I know it’s a lot of trial and error and time for results.

Maybe it’s the moment. Maybe it’s because, after a long day, I felt emotionally drained already and then I had to comfort my partner through a panic attack/existential crisis when I was already running on fumes. Maybe I need to be better with boundaries or maybe I just need to accept that sometimes you will have to give more than you are willing to.

I really, really want to lean into my unhealthier coping mechanisms.

These days, it really has been a struggle to feed myself. It’s a struggle to cook. Cooking and eating lead to dirty dishes I know I’ll have to do later. Throwing out disposable plates leads to more trash I have to take out down the line. Actually forcing the food into my loser face has become a chore. It would be so much less work just to skip meals. Sometimes I only eat two meals a day. I don’t think I have an eating disorder, just extreme executive dysfunction and anxiety and a lot of the joy has gone from meal times. Of course, I can order delivery, which exacerbates my financial anxiety and is really not something a poor person like me should do often.

Work keeps me occupied, but I can’t work all the time. I don’t have the strength to. And somehow it’s way easier to make myself do Work work than to do Chores. Executive dysfunction and depression make for a real pain together.

I’m worried about my future. I’ve been hunting for an actual, sustainable Job for...years. Ever since I moved to the city, really. Many years. The longest I’ve held onto a job since I came to this city is six months. I’m so scared that I’ll never get a job, not one that lasts, and I’m so preoccupied with my temporary freelance stuff and so emotionally disturbed that I don’t know where I’ll find the energy to force myself to start applying again.

Especially given my low success rate.

Especially because something I recently heard makes me worry that I’ve been going about the cover letter process all wrong.

I really, really want to lean into my maladaptive coping mechanisms. Bad habits call out to me like old friends.

I’m trying though. I’m writing even though I’m terrified that the stuff I’m cranking out is just laying up lots of crappy stuff I’ll have to rework or cut later. Even though the manuscript is already pretty long. I’m trying to have faith in my writing because, for all my insecurities and self-loathing and imposter syndrome, that is one thing I DO know that I’m good at, one bloody thing I can take pride in.

I’m trying. I’m just not sure that I’m getting anywhere.

[today-only-happens-once]

Patch Job

Title: Patch Job

Word Count: 4168

Summary: A pipe bursts. Roman is close to breaking, in a different kind of way. For @justisaisfine’s Sanders Bro AU. Family LAMP, platonic Thomas/Roman.

Warnings: angst/hurt/comfort, arguing, implied trauma, implied eating disorder, mention of/implied depression, overworked!Roman, imposter syndrome/feelings of inadequacy/insecurity in DROVES, crying, cursing, probably inaccurate plumbing stuff because I don’t know how pipes work, financial struggles and bad landlords, light embarrassment at lack of knowing things about plumbing.

A/N: Me? Projecting months-worth of emotions and insecurities onto Isa’s Roman? It’s far more likely than you think. Heavily inspired by parts of an episode of Freeform’s Party of Five, but no knowledge of that show is needed for this fic. It’s just where the inspiration came from (specifically the broken pipe and the “sh**ty patch job” line). It’s not my best writing, but I’m a little rusty and my brain is very full of lots of different things lately. My deepest gratitude to Isa for letting me play in their AU once again. It’s always meaningful to me.

Tags: @creativenostalgiastuff , @helloisthisusernametaken, @ren-allen, @quoth-the-sparrow, @princelogical, @random-pianist, @ravenclawicecream, @erlenmeyertrash, @milomeepit, @at-least-seven-pretty-potatoes, @rileyfirstname, @pinkeasteregg, @sassy-in-glasses, @vigilantvirgil, @generalfandomfabulousness, @lacrimosathedark, @thepoolofthedead, @monikastec, @heir-of-the-founders, @yourworstnightmare999, @artistictaurean, @kanejandkruge, @cdragontogacotar, @damienswifeolicitydallysgirl, @angst-patton, @savingshae, @noneed4thistbh, @awesomelissawho, @unikornavenger, @bopthesnoz, @spiralofsilencetheory, @finger-gunsss, @crownswriter123, @swlotakulady34, @gaylotusthatexists, @analogical-mess, @dolphidragon, @flix-net, @narniasfinestavengingsociopath, @friedlieb-ferdinand-runge, @bibbidy-bobbity-booyah, @procrastinations-my-middle-name, @theburntesttoast, @monroig, @secretlyawyvern, @puddinglec4t

…

Roman startles awake, and for a brief moment, isn’t sure why.

Then he hears muffled cursing, and a panicked, strangled “Uh… Roman?!”—Roman places it as Logan’s voice immediately even in his half-awake state—and kicks off the thin blankets that remain tangled between his legs. He scrubs a hand across his eyes and blinks blearily around him. The pull-out couch is empty, which means his brothers are all awake. Roman checks the time on the clock hanging on the wall.

The boys had ten minutes before they needed to be ready for school.

“Roman!”

Logan’s sharp, strained voice is definitely coming from the kitchen. A second later, Roman thinks he can hear… hissing?

The eldest Sanders brother scrambles over the corner of the bed and nearly trips into the TV in his urgency. He skids to a stop in the kitchen entryway and freezes at the sight before him.

The cabinet under the sink is open, water spraying out from the pipe inside of it. Roman looks immediately for his youngest brother, seeing Virgil—frozen and pale—by the fridge. Patton is soaked, a plastic plate at his feet with three sandwiches on the floor quickly getting drowned by the water gushing from the burst pipe. His gray sweatshirt and jeans are soaked through. Logan is holding his hand out to block the spray as he blindly fumbles through a drawer that is just barely in arms reach.

Roman doesn’t know where to start. “What happened?” he asks, crossing quickly over to Virgil who is far too pale for Roman’s liking.

“Pipe just suddenly burst,” Logan answers as he clumsily pulls a towel from the kitchen drawer.

Roman nods, kneeling in front of his baby brother and trying not to cringe as part of his pajama pants are immediately soaked with the water that is rapidly flooding their kitchen. “Hey,” Roman says softly, “V, it’s just a pipe.” Roman counts it as no small miracle that Virgil looks at him. Makes eye contact, however brief.

It hadn’t been a guarantee. A loud, sudden noise. In the kitchen. The yelling that followed.

“Quite a wake-up call, huh?” Roman offers with a small smile, reaching a hand towards him. Asking. Inviting.

Virgil doesn’t smile back, but he looks at Roman for a moment before placing his hand in Roman’s own. His hand is shaking. Roman gives it a small squeeze. Neither of them lets go.

Roman turns back around as Logan wraps the towel around the break under the sink. He looks to Patton— soaked from the chest down.

“Pat,” Roman says. “Go change into something dry. And get Virgil some dry socks for me.”

Patton ducks his head a little and says something that Roman doesn’t quite catch.

“Hm?”

“This was the last clean thing I had,” Patton repeats. “I was gonna do laundry yesterday but couldn’t find quarters. And then I thought maybe I could ask Ms. Alice next door tonight to borrow their machine, but—”

Roman feels a twinge in his chest. “It’s my fault. Take one of my flannels. It’ll be big on you, but it’ll work until I get a load through.”

Patton nods and holds out a hand for Virgil to take. Virgil gives Roman’s one last squeeze before he follows quietly after Patton.

“And don’t forget to pack lunch!” Roman calls over his shoulder as Patton moves to the drawers in the living room. Roman looks back at Logan on the kitchen floor under the sink. His brother is soaked head to toe, and he’s fiddling with some part of the pipe that Roman can’t see from where he’s standing.

“We’re out of food, Roman,” Logan says, quietly and carefully. “Patton won’t say it, but I checked last night.”

Roman’s chest tightens even further. “What?”

“Those sandwiches on the floor was the last of what we had for lunch.” Logan grunts as he tightens something on the pipe.

Roman pinches the bridge of his nose against the impending headache he can feel coming. His acting job had helped with finances substantially, but Roman usually got groceries on Tuesdays. Filming had really picked up lately, and Roman was coming home later than usual; after the grocery store they usually went to was closed.

Roman had promised himself he’d ask the director for an extended lunch on Saturday so he could get groceries. Maybe if he offered to come in earlier on Sunday, then he could leave early today and swing by to get enough to last until Saturday when he could get the rest—

That didn’t fix the immediate problem.

Roman sighs and ducks back into the living room to the top drawer of the dresser. He pulls out the small bundle of singles and counts off twelve dollars. He’d been saving loose cash to go towards Logan’s college fund. Lunch at school cost a little over three dollars. Twelve should be enough to cover all three of them.

“Logan,” Roman says, returning to the kitchen and cringing a bit as his socks are immediately soaked in the growing pool of sink water. He hands the folded bills towards him. “Make sure all of you eat lunch, okay?”

Logan frowns, sliding out from under the sink but keeping his hand clamped around the burst. “Roman. I was thinking… maybe I should stay home today—”

“No.”

“You don’t know the first thing about fixing a busted pipe.”

“Neither do you,” Roman replies. He’s still holding the money out to him. “Look, I’ll figure it out, okay?”

“You’re not exactly the most handy person, Roman.”

“You’re not skipping school for this.”

“But—”

“I mean it, Logan!”

“You’re being an idiot,” Logan snaps. “If you would just let me—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Roman cuts him off firmly.

Logan stares at him, his expression carefully unreadable, then releases the pipe and gets to his feet. He switches the faucet off and the spray of water slows to a stop. Logan snatches the money out of Roman’s hands and brushes past him, out of the kitchen. It’s not until Logan is out of the kitchen and in the bathroom down the hall that Roman realizes what he’s said.

I can’t believe I just said that. He sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face.

Logan leaves the apartment moments later with their younger brothers in tow. He closes the door behind them before Roman can so much as say his name.

….

Roman doesn’t know what he’s doing.

He’d dug around for some kind of manual, but there wasn’t much room in their tiny apartment to hide it, and he hadn’t been able to find it. A quick trip to the hardware store had led to Roman buying a part that he thinks looks right… maybe.

He’d been at it for hours. Roman’s hair is sopping wet and falling into his eyes no matter how many times he rakes it back and out of his face, and his white t-shirt is damp with sink water and stained with rust. He had already called the studio and said he couldn’t come in today, apologizing profusely and wondering distantly if his job would survive the phone call. He was certainly replaceable, right? And he was supposed to give far more notice than four minutes after he was supposed to be there.

Calling the landlord was out of the question, really. Past experience taught Roman that their landlord was largely unreliable for maintenance and reveled in any chance to pin damages on tenants and charge them accordingly (and then some).

The wrench in Roman’s hand slips from his grip and cracks against the wooden frame of the cabinet.

“Shit,” Roman hisses, shaking his hand as if it will ease the sudden sting in his knuckles.

He finishes tightening the piece and blows out a breath before he slides out from under the cabinet. Hopefully the patch would work. He uses the edge of the kitchen counter to pull himself to his feet and holds his breath as he twists the faucet on.

A second passes as water rushes through the faucet. Roman releases his breath. But it’s quickly overshadowed by the loud pop and the spray of water that shoots out from the pipe once again. Roman jumps and dives for the pipe as it douses his sweatpants, shirt, face, hair as he frantically tries to wrap a hand around the break.

He blindly fumbles for the towel that Logan had been using before he’d left, turning his face away as his fingers slip and the water hits cheek. Roman quickly ties the towel into several knots around the pipe. He scrambles to his feet—no small task, given the pool of water in their kitchen—and turns the faucet off.

The chaos holds its breath for a moment and Roman releases his again, sagging against the counter and shoving the wet strings of his hair out of his face again.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Do we really need the sink anyway? Roman wonders. The answer is yes. Of course it was.

He has to fix it, because they used the kitchen sink water for drinking and washing food because the bathroom sink water wasn’t the best. And besides, if they had any hope of moving out of here—and God, did Roman want to move—they had to make sure everything was at least in as decent of shape as it was when they moved in. Or the repairs would cost the amount of a down payment on another apartment.

Not to mention that he’d told his brothers he could handle it. He had to handle it, and he had to do it before they got home from school.

Roman’s spiraling thoughts are interrupted by his phone buzzing on the kitchen table. Roman doesn’t have a clue who it could be, but his heartbeat jumps for a moment.

Thomas flashes across the caller ID and Roman gingerly hops over the soaked towels that litter the floor before he swipes to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” Thomas replies. “Vicki said you called off today but hadn’t been clear about why. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“Yeah,” Roman says on instinct alone. “No, I’m fine.”

“Your brothers are okay?”

Roman swallows against the sudden lump in his throat. “Yeah, Thomas. They’re okay. They’re at school.”

“Are you sick?”

“Wh—no, I’m not sick.”

There’s a beat. A hesitation. Roman can feel through the phone how Thomas wants to keep asking questions. “Okay,” Thomas says instead, and Roman isn’t sure why. Or why it twists a knot in his chest. “Do you need anything?”

No, Roman wants to say, the word built on instinct and fear pressing against the back of his teeth. But he looks at the clock—it’s a little past noon, which gave him about three and a half hours before the boys got home—and he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.

“I…um…” Roman doesn’t know why his voice trembles just a little. Thomas had told him that if he needed anything, he’d be there, right? He could trust Thomas.

He could trust Thomas.

His grip around the phone tightens a little. He laughs, empty and hollow as he looks around the disheveled, sopping wet kitchen. “Do you know anything about fixing a busted pipe?”

A slight pause, and Roman isn’t sure how to interpret it. “Yeah,” Thomas says eventually. Lightly. Like Roman had just asked him to run lines with him. “They want to do one more take, and then I’ll be right there, okay?”

“Okay,” Roman says, relief overpowering any other thing he should be feeling. “And uh, thanks.”

“No problem. Give me an hour.”

…

When there’s a knock at the apartment door fifty minutes later, Roman’s been doused with water about four more times. It’s not until he answers the door and Thomas is standing on the other side with a box of take-out from Roman’s favorite lunch place by the studio that the eldest Sanders brother realizes he probably looks a disaster. If Thomas thinks so, he’s gracious enough to not say anything.

“I brought lunch,” Thomas says, holding out the box towards Roman. “Something told me you probably didn’t eat yet.” It’s a light comment, more conversational than accusatory, but Roman feels his eyes heat a little. He blinks quickly.

“Uh, thanks,” he says lamely, taking the box and stepping aside. He realizes suddenly that Thomas had never been to the apartment before, and if he wasn’t quite so desperate to just fix the problem in the kitchen, he’d probably be a little bit mortified.

“You’ll never guess what Terrence and Valerie started doing today,” Thomas says as Roman closes the door behind him. “They started this whole ‘finish the lyric’ for showtunes thing between takes. Except they’re doing it with really obscure shows. Urinetown was one from Valerie and Terrence just made up the lyric because he’d never seen the show. He rhymed ‘urination’ and ‘station’.”

Despite himself, Roman barks a laugh. The corner of Thomas’s mouth quirks into a smile.

“They tried to get me to do one for Death Note the Musical. I’ve seen the anime, but I didn’t have a clue about the song they were singing.” Thomas shakes his head a little as they step into the living room. The pullout bed hadn’t been put away yet. Clothes litter the floor, left behind in the wake of the chaotic morning.

Thomas doesn’t even seem phased. “I think they’re gonna make it a regular thing. You should challenge them to it.”

Roman rubs the back of his neck and turns to look at the other actor. “Maybe,” he says, even as his stomach feels a little uneasy. “Assuming I still have a job after today.”

Thomas’s brows pull together, his head tilting a little in confusion. “Is there any doubt?”

“A little?”

“There shouldn’t be. They’re not gonna fire you just because something came up last minute one day.”

“You seem pretty sure about that.”

“I am.”

Roman stares at him for a moment, waiting for Thomas to elaborate. He has the sudden feeling that Thomas may have done or said something to someone in his absence.

Thomas arcs an eyebrow, then lifts a shoulder. “You’re more talented than you give yourself credit for, Roman,” he says, like it’s a statement of fact rather than one of the kindest things Roman has ever heard in his life. “And don’t think your extra hours these past several weeks have gone by unnoticed. Not by me, and not by the director. Taking a day—especially to deal with something like this—isn’t going to put your job in jeopardy. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Roman says quietly. He doesn’t know if he believes it. “Okay.”

“To be honest,” Thomas adds, slipping his hands into his pockets, “when I heard you weren’t coming in, I was kind of hoping you were taking a day to get some extra rest.”

Roman ducks away from Thomas’s sincerity. “Yeah, that’s… not really a possibility for me.”

He hears Thomas sigh, and tries not to wince. Maybe asking Thomas for help had been a mistake. He’d always wanted to impress Thomas, after all. The last thing he wanted Thomas to think was that he didn’t have his life handled. Losing Thomas’s respect would… devastate him, and Roman can’t help but feel like he’s rapidly heading down that path.

“Sorry,” Roman says.

“No, Roman, it’s…” Thomas stops, shakes his head. Tries again. “It’s not your fault. It’s just… your responsibility, and it shouldn’t be.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” Thomas insists, and that brings Roman up short. “I mean, I get that you have your brothers to help you, but… still.” He glances around the apartment. “Actually, speaking of, I’m a little surprised that Logan went to school. He seems like he’d like to tinker to help you out.”

“He tried,” Roman says hollowly. His stomach turns against how he’d left things with Logan this morning. “I sent him to school anyway.”

“Ah,” Thomas says.

“I told him I had it handled,” Roman elaborates, and he isn’t sure why. Thomas hadn’t asked for more information, and Roman rarely offered it when it wasn’t asked for.

“You didn’t want his help? He’s a smart kid. Given the circumstances, I’m sure one day wouldn’t have—”

“I don’t—” Roman cuts in, and then snaps his jaw shut as the memories of his morning flood through his mind. Virgil, frozen and pale and barely responding to him. Patton not having clean clothes and also him not mentioning that they were out of food. Logan arguing with him. Roman saying he didn’t want to hear it…

“I need my brothers to feel like I can handle it.”

“The broken pipe?”

“Everything.”

A brief pause. “Did… you try asking your landlord for some help?”

“We—I can’t afford it…” Roman trails off and shakes his head. He sinks onto the edge of the pull-out bed and folds his hands between his knees. “Handling things is what I do.”

Thomas purses his lips, and Roman feels himself tense before Thomas looks towards the kitchen. “Then let’s take a look, yeah?”

Roman takes the hand that Thomas offers and pushes himself to his feet. “The kitchen is a mess,” he says.

“I’d be shocked if it wasn’t. Burst pipes tend to do that,” Thomas says with a faint smile. He squeezes Roman’s shoulder and then ducks through the kitchen entryway, seeming unbothered by the pool of water and sopping wet towels that litter the floor.

Roman self-consciously folds his arms across his chest as Thomas kneels down by the sink, peering closely at the pipe. He grabs the wrench that Roman had abandoned by the counter and sets to work.

“Hm,” Thomas hums, but Roman can’t see his face.

“Hm?”

“Hm,” Thomas confirms with an amused smile before he rolls a bit to be on his back and looking up at the pipe. “I think I may have figured out part of your problem. Come here.”

Roman kneels beside Thomas, and the older actor scoots to the left to make room so Roman can see what he’s talking about. He unscrews the part that Roman had been doing his best to wedge onto the pipe. “This is the wrong size. So that’s a small part of it.” Roman flushes in embarrassment, but Thomas doesn’t seem to notice. “Easy mistake, though. The real problem is that these pipes are pretty rusted, which I’d bet is why it burst. See this discoloration?” Thomas points.

“Yeah,” Roman says.

“It’s a bad sign. Plus, you’ve got this here—” Thomas points to a part of the pipe further up that Roman hadn’t even been paying attention to before—“which looks like a leak that someone tried to fix with duct tape.”

“I mean… it stopped the leak,” Roman offers weakly. He feels Thomas glance over at him, but he doesn’t meet his eyes.

“For now,” Thomas says, his voice oddly gentle. “But it won’t last very long.” He turns his attention back to the pipe. When Roman risks a glance over at him in the cramped space under the sink, he sees Thomas’s frown deepen.

“What?” Roman asks.

Thomas shakes his head a little. “Just thinking. If this pipe is corroded a bit with rust here, it’s likely it exists elsewhere too. So this will probably keep happening, unless you can get the bigger problem addressed—”

Roman’s chest constricts painfully and he slides out from beside Thomas. “Okay,” he says tightly. Strained. “Okay.” His fingers twitch and he pushes himself to his feet.

Thomas—slower than Roman had—also slides out from under the sink. He sits, though, with his back to the wooden cabinet beside the sink.

“I can get another job,” Roman says. He’s pacing but moving helps him think and he needs to think a lot right now. “Pick up a little bit of extra cash which could maybe get us a better shot of moving out sooner, or if not that, maybe enough to cover the—”

“Roman, this isn’t on you,” Thomas cuts in gently. “Your landlord should fix it.”

“But he’ll charge us, because—”

“Then I’ll get someone to come in and take a look. I know some people—”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll figure it out. I’ll just, ah, get the right size part to fix the busted section, right?”

“Sure,” Thomas says slowly, “but it wouldn’t fix the larger problem. A quick patch job won’t keep it from happening again if you really do have a corrosion problem.”

Roman rakes a hand through his hair. “But it’ll be enough for now. Right?”

Roman turns an imploring gaze onto Thomas, still sitting on the floor. Thomas’s brows pull together. “Roman, let me talk to—”

“I’ll handle it, Thomas,” Roman says quickly. “I’ll figure it out.”

The eldest Sanders sees a flash of frustration pass through Thomas’s brown eyes as the older actor pushes himself to his feet. “You keep saying that. But it doesn’t seem like you know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t!” Roman snaps suddenly, throwing his hands up. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, Thomas. I never do. I just… grab on tightly to whatever is the biggest mess and I try to hold it together long enough to stick until the next or a bigger mess comes along.”

Silence meets the end of his words and this morning flickers through Roman’s mind again before he shakes it off. “Sometimes that mess is one of my brothers and sometimes that mess is figuring out when I can get groceries and sometimes that mess is realizing I didn’t learn lines for filming tomorrow but I just… I do the very next thing and hope and pray it’s enough that my brothers don’t look too closely because if they do…” Roman’s voice breaks and he swallows hard against his burning, blurring vision. “They’ll realize I’m just a shitty patch job too.”

That’s all Roman is. That’s all he’d ever been, for as long as Roman could remember. A band-aid on the chasm that always threatened to swallow his brothers whole.

But for some unfathomable reason, his brothers trusted him to take care of them. And he doesn’t know what to do if they realized just how much their trust was misplaced. Just how out-of-his-depth Roman truly was, is, had always been. He’d spent his entire life trying and failing to fill the hole left behind by their parents, and he was a fraud but none of them had figured it out yet. Roman had spent countless sleepless nights hoping they never do.

Thomas is looking at him and Roman—the coward he is—can’t meet his eyes.

“Roman,” Thomas says softly in the silence, “you’re enough for them.”

“I’m not,” Roman says, and giving voice to that realization that he’d locked away in the recesses of his mind makes his legs feel wobbly. “I can’t… fill all the space they need, Thomas. It’s too big. I can just… try, because… because…” They’re all I have.

Thomas’s hand moves as if to reach out across the space between them, but he shoves his hand into his pocket instead. “You are enough for them. You give them every piece of yourself, and they trust you. And if, sometimes, the damage is a little bigger than just you can fix… well. You hold on tight until you can find a piece a little bit bigger.”

Startled, Roman looks up at Thomas through his blurry vision that clears suddenly when he blinks. The smile Thomas offers is sad, but there’s something earnest in his eyes that makes an entirely different kind of lump form in his throat.

Thomas doesn’t break from his gaze. “I know you’re used to being on your own, Roman, but… you’re not, anymore. You’ve got help. And… it’s okay to ask for it. It’s okay to let people know you need it.” Thomas takes a hesitant step closer. “It doesn’t mean you aren’t enough for them. They think the world of you. I knew that the moment they tried to fight me during that combat choreography practice.”

Roman laughs wetly at the memory. “Old habits die hard.”

“I know… But you’ve got people who want to help you with that part of it too.”

Roman sniffles and scrubs at his damp cheeks. Thomas seems to soften even more, and he pulls his hands out of his pockets and holds his arms out in an offering of a hug. “You’re not a patch job, Roman. You’re a person. People need help fixing things sometimes.”

Roman releases a breath and hugs Thomas, the feeling at once foreign and comforting. “Breathe,” Thomas urges. “Okay?”

Roman smiles faintly as he pulls back. “Okay.”

Thomas nods once, a faint smile tugging at his own lips. “Good. Now let’s fix a broken pipe.”

[sanguislyre]

Bad Things Bingo (my list)

I’ve copied and pasted the trope list from Bad Things Bingo, but I’ve deleted any tropes that I don’t like and don’t want to do. This is just a list for safe-keeping that I’ll be using on the picker wheel when I decide I want to do short stories.

@badthingshappenbingo

Addiction/Withdrawal Adrenaline Crash Ambush And I Must Scream Anger Born of Worry Arm in a Sling Attempted Rape Bedside Vigil Being Watched Big Brother Instinct Biting Black Eye Bleeding Through the Bandages Blindfolded Blood from the Mouth Bloodstained Clothes Bloody Nose Bound and Gagged Bridal Carry Broken Limb Broken Nose Broken Rib(s) Bruises Bullying Bundled Up in Blankets Buried in Rubble Cabin Fever Caught in a Storm Cave In Chained Heat Chained to a Wall Childhood Trauma Chloroformed Choking Chronic Pain Claustrophobia Clawing at Own Throat Common Cold Communication Suddenly Cut Off Concussion Conditioning Coughing Up Blood Cradling Someone in Their Arms Cry into Chest Crying Themselves to Sleep Damaged Vocal Cords Definitely Just a Cold Dehumanization Dehydration Denied Food as Punishment Depression Dislocated Joint Dissociation Doesn’t Realize They’ve Been Injured Domestic Abuse Don’t Let Them See You Cry Dragged by the Ankle Ear Injury Eating Disorder Fainting Fake Kill Scare Falling from a Great Height Fevers Financial Trouble Find the Cure Flashbacks Forced Out of the Closet Forced to Beg Forced to Watch Forgetting to Eat Frostbite Get It Over With Going into Shock Grabbed by the Chin Grabbed by the Hair Grief/Mourning Gunshot Wound Hair Matted with Blood Hand Gagging Hand Stomp Handcuffed/Manacled Headache/Migraine Hidden Scar Hiding an Illness Hiding an Injury Homesickness Hope Is Scary Human Shield Hurt Caretaker Hurts to Breathe Hyperventilating Hypothermia I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed I Have Your Loved One “I Know You’re In There Somewhere” Fight I Should Have Been Better “I’m Fine” Infected Wound Insecurity Insomnia Internal Bleeding Interrogation Isolation It’s All My Fault Kidnapping Killing in Self-Defense Knife to the Throat Lacerations Leave Me Alone Locked Up and Left Behind Losing Their Temper Loss of Hearing Loss of Sight Lost Their Voice from Screaming Love Potion/Love Spell Made a Lab Rat Major Character Death Manhandling Minor Character Death Missing and Presumed Dead Motion Sickness Mugging Muzzled Neglect/Abandonment Nervous Breakdown Never Be Hurt Again Nightmares No Anesthetic Non-Consensual Touching Not Afraid of You Anymore Not Used to Freedom Outnumbered in a Fight Over-the-Shoulder Carry Painful Wound-Cleaning Panic Attack Paralyzed by Fear Passing Out from Pain Pinned Down by Wreckage Pinned to the Wall Pleading Please Don’t Leave Me Pneumonia Power Suppression Rage Against the Reflection Ransom Note/Video Rape/Non-Con Raspy Breathing Rendered Mute Reopening an Old Wound Rope Burns Scalding Scar to Remember School Struggles Self-Harm Self-Loathing Self-Surgery Sensory Deprivation Sensory Overload Setting a Broken Bone Shaking and Shivering The Silent Treatment Slammed into a Wall Sleep Deprivation Slowly Running Out of Air Sneezing Snowed In Sore Throat Sound Torture Soup for the Sick Stabbing Stalking Standing Cuffs Starvation Stitches Stomach Flu Strangling Struggling Against the Caretaker Stumbling and Staggering Suffocation Suicide Attempt Superpower Overload Taking the Bullet Taunting Tearful Smile Tears of Fear That’s Not Normal This Is for Your Own Good Thrown Down the Stairs Tied to a Chair Tortured for Information Touch Starved Tranquilizer Dart Traumatic Touch Aversion Troubled Fetal Position Trust Issues Trying Not to Cry Twisted Ankle Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms Used As Bait Vehicular Accident Verbal Abuse Vertigo Villain Reveals the Secret Voice Breaking Vomiting Was Too Hard on Them Water TortureWhipping Will Not Be a Victim Wiping the Other’s Tears Away Worked Themselves to Exhaustion Working Through the Cold You Can Scream All You Want

[wildwcmen]

Basic Information

Full Name: Andromeda Haneul Lee

Nickname(s): Andie, Sky

Age: 20-27

Date of Birth: February 2nd

Hometown: San Francisco, CA

Ethnicity: Korean

Nationality: American

Gender: Demigirl

Pronouns: She/Her & They/Them

Religion: Polytheism

Occupation: Student, aircraft engineer

Language(s) Spoken: English, Korean

Physical Appearance

Face Claim: Chungha

Hair Colour: Black, dark brown, blonde

Eye Colour: Dark brown

Height: 5′3

Build: Petite, somewhat athletic, titties kinda big (like c up)

Tattoos: N/A

Piercings: Ears

Clothing Style: Pastels, frilly dresses, pearls, definitely likes to rock a suit from time to time

Usual Expression: Flustered, concentrated, thoughtful, dreamy

Distinguishing Characteristics: Expressive eyes, sweet expression

Health

Conditions: general anxiety disorder, panic attacks

Sleeping Habits: Andie is careful to keep a strict sleeping schedule. She sleeps before 10 PM almost every night, and makes sure to get 8 hours of sleep. They prefer to rise early.

Eating Habits: She’s very healthy and eats an 80-90% plant based diet. She cooks for herself most of the time, only eating out or ordering in very rarely.

Exercise Habits: She runs every morning and has been practicing yoga since she was very young.

Emotional Stability: 6/10

Sociability: She craves social interaction, but finds herself easily flustered and quickly worn out. She’s a bit quiet and awkward, but tries her best!

Drug Use: Occasionally uses marijuana, has experimented with mushrooms, but nothing regularly. She grew up in a household in which drugs use wasn’t largely stigmatized, and as such had healthy experimentation but nothing major.

Alcohol Use: Yes, only socially.

Personality

Label: TBA

Positive Traits: optimistic, intelligent, hard working, kind, affectionate, athletic

Negative Traits: naive, unconsciously emotionally manipulative, emotionally withdrawn, awkward, strange

Fears: failure, not being good enough

Hobbies: yoga, reading, soccer, basketball, running, swimming, video games (the sims, minecraft, very casual), pottery

Habits: giggling when nervous, nail biting, saying ‘um’, pausing too much in conversation

Favourites

Weather: crisp, fall weather

Colour: sky blue

Music: dark indie pop vibes

Movies: she grew up watching sci-fi movies with her mom, and definitely has a love of those. she also enjoys drama and mystery.

Sport: soccer

Beverage: pink lemonade

Food: acai bowl with extra honey

Animal: bear cubs

Family

Father: unknown

Mother: cassiopeia lee

Sibling(s): younger half siblings

Children: n/a

Pet(s): tba

Family’s Financial Status: well off

Extra

Zodiac Sign: aquarius sun, gemini moon, pisces rising

MBTI: INSJ

Enneagram: The Achiever

Temperament: Phlegmatic

Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw

Moral Alignment: Neutral Good

Primary Vice: Jealousy

Primary Virtue: Kindness

Element: Air

Flaws

moody | short-tempered | emotionally unstable | whiny | controlling | conceited | possessive | paranoid | lies | impatient | cowardly | bitter | selfish | power-hungry (but also afraid of her own power tbh, knows she’s ‘supposed’ to be a leader but doesn’t know if it’s right for her or if she’s ‘good’ enough) | greedy | lazy | judgmental | forgetful | impulsive | spiteful | stubborn | sadistic | petty | unlucky | absent-minded | abusive | addict | aggressive | childish | callous | clingy | delusional | cocky | competitive | corrupt | cynical | cruel | depressed | deranged | egotistical | envious | insecure | insensitive | lustful | delinquent | guilt complex | reclusive | reckless | nervous | oversensitive | avoidant | restless.

Strengths

honest | trustworthy | thoughtful | caring | brave | patient | selfless | ambitious | tolerant | lucky | intelligent | confident | focused | humble | generous | merciful | observant | wise | clever | charming | cheerful | optimistic | decisive | adaptive | calm | protective | proud | diligent | considerate | compassionate | good sportsmanship | friendly | empathetic | passionate | reliable | resourceful | sensible | sincere | witty | funny.

Skills & Hobbies

art | acting | astronomy | animals | archery | sports | beach combing | ballet | bird watching | blacksmithing | boating | calligraphy | camping | candle making | casino gambling | ceramics | racing | chess | music | cooking | crochet | weaving | exercise | swordplay | fishing | gardening | ghost hunting | ice skating | magic | engineering | building | inventing | leather-working | martial arts | meditation | origami | parkour | people watching | swimming | puppetry | pyrotechnics | quilting | reading | collecting | shopping | socializing | storytelling | writing | traveling.

Human Verse

she was raised by her mother in los angeles, california. her mother is a very popular artist and internet persona. she comes from a very loving home, but having such an outgoing and charismatic mother became a bit of a crutch for her. she never really learned how to speak for herself, and was often embarrassed by the stories of her mother that were spread all over the internet. as such, andie became a very quiet and reserved sort of person. she values intelligence above all else, and went away very far for college as soon as it became an option. her main goal in life is to step out of her mother’s shadow and be her own person.

Supernatural Verse

she was raised between the moon and earth, spending time on both planes so that she had a strong connection to both sides of herself. andie always knew that she was in line for the throne, and this was always something that stressed her out greatly. as such, she all but repressed her abilities in hopes that her mother would think one of her other siblings was favored by the gods instead of her. as a teenager she ran away to the underworld and made friends with certain gods, namely persephone, hades and hecate. she was gifted with magical abilities during this time, choosing to focus on those rather than the celestial gifts that she got from her mother.

species: lunar extraterrestrial & human abilities: repressed celestial manipulation, active lunar and stellar magic

[magnificentspywombatprune]

Let’s play “I was abused” game! Are blog and bold the things your parents have done to you. Italicize if you are not sure. (copy paste it all and then bold)

physical abuse

parent slapped me to prove their point/teach me a lesson

parent spanked me as a “punishment”, saying it was for my own good

parent pulled my hair to force me to move

parent threw things at me while angry, things heavy enough to hurt me

parents trapped me in a room/corner so i couldn’t escape them

parent hit me when i wouldn’t obey them/tried to confront them

parent used a twig/stick/belt to lash at my body

parent grabbed me to force me to pay attention to them

parent pinned me down and physically prevented me from escaping

parent brought me into situations where i feared for my life

parent made it painfully obvious to me that i’ll obey them of suffer injuries

parent threatened to beat me if i wouldn’t do as they say

parent forcefully fed me something i refused to eat

parent made an attempt at strangling/drowning/burning me

parent banged my head/body into the wall/furniture

emotional abuse

parent called me derogatory names and slurs more than once

parent said my name mostly with hatred and scorn in their voice

parent degraded me and humiliated me in front of others for fun

parent insulted and devalued something important to me

parent deprived me of something that meant the world to me

parent yelled and swore at me in anger more than once

parent blamed me for things that were out of my control/not my fault

parent shamed me for my physical appearance

parent guilt-tripped me for not pleasing them well enough

parent regarded me as a burden and shamed me for needing them at all

parent insisted i couldn’t take a joke after i got hurt from their insult

parent never comforted me/got angry if i reached for comfort

parent punished me for crying/showing fears/showing trauma symptoms

parent humiliated me for showing excitement or happiness

parent subtly let me know that my feelings and problems don’t matter

parent got angry at me for being depressed/angry/suicidal/tired

parent blamed me for feeling depressed/angry/suicidal/tired

parent compared me to other children to prove how i’m the worst

parent decided for me how i feel when it was convenient for them

parent told me that i was crazy/delusional/need to be locked away

parent threatened me with kicking me out/sending away if i don’t change

parents refused to accept my sexuality/tried to force it to change

parent required me to act normal to protect family reputation

parent isolated me from family activities they all enjoy

parent assured me nobody will ever want me

parent insisted that i was lucky and i could have had it much worse

parent made me responsible for their well being and made me their caretaker

parent insisted that their harmful acts were all made “out of love”

parent demanded me to be available for their requests at any time

parent punished me for trying to establish boundaries

parent destroyed my belongings as a revenge

parent made inappropriate sex jokes and comments in my presence

parent denied doing any of this and insists the blame is on me

psychological abuse

parent kept pointing out my flaws as proofs i won’t achieve anything

parent called me stupid, incompetent, ignorant while withholding information that i needed to know in order to complete tasks

parent would change their side of the argument in crucial moment and then pretend it was obvious from the start

parent stalked me/distrusted me without any reason/invaded my privacy

parent attacked my insecurities and vulnerabilities in any argument

parent forced me into degrading actions while they watched me do it

parent threatened to leave me

parent accused me regularly of behaving the way they did

parent never acknowledged/approved/praised my actions

parent always demanded they are right without any proof/explanation

parent insisted they’re a great parent, using financial support as proof

parent insisted that i should be grateful for how good they are to me

parent gaslighted me and tried to make me believe my memories weren’t real if i confronted them about what they did

neglect

parent didn’t notice i have been eating properly

parent didn’t notice/take care of me while i was sick

parent didn’t notice i was injured

parent didn’t notice i didn’t have clothes/shoes for school

parent didn’t notice i suffered from trauma

parent didn’t notice i was anxious and stressed

parent didn’t notice i was depressed

parent didn’t notice i was cutting myself

parent didn’t notice i was suicidal

parent didn’t care/notice i tried committing suicide

parent didn’t notice i was sexually abused

parent didn’t notice i was being bullied

parent failed to get me medical attention when it was needed

parent failed to/refused to provide me help for my mental disorder

parent failed to teach me the very basics of self care

parent didn’t seem to notice any of my needs or feelings except for the absolute minimum i required to survive

when i notified them of these things, the denied it, accused me of lying, decided it wasn’t happening and/or blamed it on me

[chemicholy]

FULL NAME.  luna varian lune jordan MEANING. varian means ‘variable’ in french. lune is a moon reference. jordan is homage to his va, jeremy jordan. NICKNAME.  varitas, var, hair stripe, etc GENDER.  trans male HEIGHT.   5′2″ / 157 cm AGE.  14-15 ZODIAC. aries SPOKEN LANGUAGES.  english, latin

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

HAIR COLOR. black w/ brown highlights, one blue streak EYE COLOR.  bright blue SKIN TONE. white, paler in winters than in summers because, contrary to popular belief, he spends time outside when it’s sunny. freckles. BODY TYPE.  ecto-mesomorph. long and skinny, but little trouble storing and building muscle fat if he worked for it. ACCENT. not a decipherable one, if any VOICE. jeremy jordan

DOMINANT HAND.  right handed POSTURE.  slouches when sitting, not due to insecurity but bad habit. tries to sit up straight when he remembers to. hands either in lap or fiddling with something. leans forward when sitting and oftentimes when standing as well. rocks on his feet when bored. fidgety. SCARS. several littering his hands and forearms - burns, cuts and others from alchemy experiments and the like. some other small burns probably adorn his lower legs and collarbone / neck area, from explosions or splashes of hot or corrosive substances. not scars, but varian also frequently finds himself bruised in odd places from collisions he doesn’t realize caused bruises. TATTOOS.  none  MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S).  blue hair streak, the fact that he’s a small teenager, slight buck teeth / tooth gap, general vibe

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 !

PLACE OF BIRTH. ??? old corona, assumedly HOMETOWN.  old corona BIRTH WEIGHT.  normal BIRTH HEIGHT.  smol MANNER OF BIRTH.  regular?? FIRST WORDS.  moon, sun ( more like tsn at the time ), dada / mom SIBLINGS. none PARENTS.  quirin ( father ), lyra ( mother ) PARENT INVOLVEMENT. lyra died when he was still too young to remember her. quirin has been by his side his whole life, and with the exception of his oft-explosive adventures in alchemy, has been a supportive and pivotal figure in varian’s life. ( quirin was also one of the sparse few in old corona who actually accepted him for being trans at first. )

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 !

OCCUPATION. alchemist, scientist, inventor, engineer ( all self-proclaimed ) CURRENT RESIDENCE.  old corona / prison?? / no permanent residence CLOSE FRIENDS.  rudiger RELATIONSHIP STATUS.  single FINANCIAL STATUS.  pretty much broke DRIVER’S LICENSE. none CRIMINAL RECORD. in tts: treason, kidnapping of royalty, attempted murder, placing royalty in direct danger by manipulation, amassing of an army ( the automatons ). in modern au: harboring of illegal substances, use of illegal substances, physical assault VICES.  pride. wrath. envy.

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION. demisexual ROMANTIC ORIENTATION.  biromantic PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE.  submissive       |       dominant |       switch PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE.  submissive       |       dominant       |       switch LIBIDO.   TURN ON’S. TURN OFF’S.  

RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES.  honestly i don’t even want to hazard a guess. unless he really tries to work at it, though, probably not too great tbh.

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG. get back to me on this, i haven’t found one that speaks to me yet HOBBIES TO PASS TIME.   drawing, attempting to organize his lab, doing experiments or research, accidentally making things explode MENTAL ILLNESSES.  bipolar disorder, depression, mild g.a.d. - rejection sensitive dysphoria PHYSICAL ILLNESSES.  mild malnourishment from forgetting to eat regularly. LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED.  left brained

PHOBIAS.  hemophobia. mild claustrophobia. rejection. amber ( after the quirin thing ). being wrong.

SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL.  honestly, it fluctuates from a 0 to a 100 at almost any given moment - most of the time high enough that he feels confident his choices are right. VULNERABILITIES.  his curiosity. his ability to commit to an action even after he realizes its wrongs. overconfidence / self-righteousness. emotional state / emotional instability. 

[mywinestainedheart]

Depression, Anxiety and … Cigarettes?

I’m not a smoker.

I know this because I take three drags then let it burn to the butt between my fingers. Sometimes it dies before I even take those three drags because I’m not pulling hard enough. Other times I put it out myself and get back to that same stick a week later.

I hate the taste. I usually eat something or wash my mouth out with toothpaste to get rid of it. I hate the smell. I wash my hands three times, toss my jerseys into the washing machine and hang my head over the bathtub for a conditioner-rinse to douse all traces of the scent.

I’m not a smoker.

What I am is a heartbroken, social media stalking, recently-diagnosed-with-depression twenty-eight year old woman trying to quell the anxiety she’s, apparently, been living with since her teenage years. Childhood bullying and molestation sob-stories aside, I always knew there was something functionally wrong with me.

Online descriptions of depression will detail a broad list of symptoms that essentially claim everyone in the world to be depressed. Sleep disorderliness, apathy, agitation, lack of concentration, poor appetite etc., etc. By that standard, my whole first year class at uni was depressed, so I never thought much of it. Besides, this would happen in bouts. It was never consistent. I’d experience an odd wave of anxiety that would come out of nowhere, but hang out with my smoker friends and feel fine for the next five to ten minutes. The next day, that anxiety might even be gone. I would have breakdowns and cry about feeling ugly, vapid and worthless, then eventually sober to no sense of feelings at all. I tend to overthink and get angry very easily. Someone cutting me off in traffic can have me ruminating over it for the rest of the day. I prefer to keep to myself, yet I’m constantly seeking distractions. In childhood it was imaginary worlds through Barbie dolls, in adulthood it was sex. Happiness would come and go, but pessimistic thoughts about myself, my life and my chances of finding love in a partner the way it seemed so easy for all my prettier friends were an ever-present influence on my psyche.

People will tell you “just snap out of it”, “think positive”, “thoughts become things” and, my personal favourite, “choose to be happy”. Well, gee! I never thought of that, clueless Life Orientation teacher who has probably never stepped out of her comfort zone within the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Imma just wake up tomorrow and tell myself to be in a better mood.

I had learned to exist in this way: Feeling empty and, fittingly, not having a name for it. Feeling sad and not having a reason for it. Overthinking and comparing myself to every girl who walked into the room because I believed that everyone else could see how much lesser than I was compared to her too. I would come up after brushing my teeth to stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and wonder what it would be like to just not exist anymore.

We used to live in an upmarket housing complex in Johannesburg. People who lived in this area are usually well off. They aren’t thought to have problems, and yet, we had a neighbour whose husband shot himself in the complex park. Years later, I heard of a former high school classmate of mine who shot himself in the middle of the street in the same area.

It got me thinking: People who are only occasionally sad, like me, don’t frequently envy people who had the gall to commit suicide, do they?

The first time I went to a psychiatrist was because I broke down in front of my mother the night before. My heart was bleeding from a breakup I hated that I was going through. This man insisted that I “didn’t deserve him”, but the twenty-four-year-old yuppie he used to go to school with, for some reason, did. He picked her over me and he’s happy with his choice. Put that on top of an entire existence of feeling lesser than, and I realised I was a ticking timebomb.

I was toying with the idea of suicide and noticed that the only thing holding me back was a fear of the unknown.

These thoughts are not new, by the way. I’d been having them since childhood. The one I entertained the most was standing behind the kitchen door with a knife to my chest, so that when someone swung the door open, the blade would push through my ribcage. Obviously, this would not be as simple in execution, but I was nine and it was a fantasy. Give me a break.

Upon hearing that I was thinking of killing myself, my mother chortled and told me “you’re behaving like a teenager”. That response would be the number one reason I have never spoken about my deeper feelings with my mom before this. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to love, it was that she didn’t understand that someone like me required a different type of love. A child might not say so because they themselves don’t know what it is, but there will always be subtle signs of a mood disorder. In hindsight, I’d displayed a number of them, but I was dismissed as being anti-social, sullen or attention-seeking.

“I’m just so tired,” I remember saying, choking on my own tears.

“Of what?” My mother demanded. She couldn’t understand what I could possibly be talking about. You’re only twenty-eight, you have a roof over your head and both parents that love you. You have a job. We’ve given you a car. You have freedom. You have friends. What on earth could have you crying like the world was coming to an end?

“Everything,” I said. Because that was the truth. I was tired of everything. I was tired of waking up every morning and remembering that the man I loved had chosen someone else over me. I was tired of driving for an hour every day to get into town, passing everything that reminded me of him and the breakup (including him and his new girlfriend in the middle of traffic). I was tired of going to a job that was adding nothing to my career, tired of budgeting a pathetic salary. Tired of waiting on my father and his promises that he was setting me up on a different career path, tired of eating the same food everyday (if I even remembered to eat). Tired of smoking cigarettes with my cousins cause I felt like if I was failing this badly at life then I may as well smoke up and hope for cancer, and I was absolutely exhausted with the idea that I had lost my twenty-four-year-old niece; a bodacious lover of life who’d existed on a seemingly never-ending vibration of confidence and positivity, to a senseless car accident, but here I was, still breathing.

Someone who deserved life was cemented in the ground. I woke up every morning wishing we could trade places.

The psychiatrist let me talk for a few minutes before diagnosing me as depressed and suicidal. Considering multiple factors and incidences I’d described in session, she said the depression has been there my whole life and that my break up was the lit cigarette that rolled too close to the leaky-gas pipe in my identity, causing this implosion.

Note, I’m not blaming my ex for my mental instability. How could he have known if I didn’t know? I’d had my suspicions, but, like my mother; telling him would have likely amounted to him (initially) dismissing me as being dramatic. What he saw as a “crazy” display of raw insecurity was probably the starter flames of this inferno. Again, not his fault, but he was certainly a contributor, and I find myself struggling not to resent him for that. But that’s a blog post for another time.

The psychiatrist prescribes me anti-depressants, some other drug that causes drowsiness, and orders to me to eight months of therapy with a nice woman she recommends in the area I live now. All I’m hearing is money, money and more money. I can’t afford any of this on what I make, and my dad is a businessman whose entire income is dependent on deals. Sometimes we have more money than we know what to do with, other times we’re so broke that there’s a negotiation between toilet paper and breakfast cereal. At twenty-eight, I’m officially jaded with the financial instability I grew up in, so I dismiss the idea of therapy entirely. Why start something only to stop because we can’t afford it anymore? Besides, I’d apparently been living with this raging beast my whole life. Surely, we could find a way to co-exist once again? Like Venom and Eddie Brock.

I say thanks but no thanks to the medication and go home with a mother who suddenly has a whole new understanding of me. She’s attentive when she talks now, and says ‘I love you’ before she hangs up the phone. Confessing my diagnosis to my father shouldn’t have felt embarrassing, but it did. I hated that he might now see me as weak. I was the one child he didn’t have to worry about. I had a sassy attitude and a smart mouth. I was assertive in my speech and tolerated no bullshit. I could hold my own against anyone, and I knew he was proud of me for that. How would he perceive me after I admitted that I’m not as strong as I pretend to be?

The truth? No different. I was still his daughter. The only change I noticed is that he looks at me when he talks to me (more attentive, like my mother) and makes a point of using my family nickname when he says good morning, hello or goodbye. He’s also trying harder to make sure his planned career path for me falls into place, but I’m no longer holding my breath.

As for me and my revelation of my diagnosis? Like I said, I always knew that there was something functionally wrong with me. I just have a name for it now. I’m still battling with the ideas of death and how I would do it. The running fantasy now is one I usually entertain before bed about slitting my wrists and sliding into a bathtub. Morbid, I know, but it’s the only way I can seem to find sleep these days: Thinking of no longer existing helps me transition into a state where I no longer exist for a little while. I’m not about to slit my wrists any time soon (besides, my pain threshold has a limit. If I were going to kill myself I wouldn’t pick a method quite so agonising and messy), but I recognise that these are not healthy thought processes. I do think I need therapy. After all, you have to learn how to love yourself before anyone else can love you and all that, right? I want to overcome this. I want to see progression in my life and my career. I don’t want my ex to believe he dodged a stagnant bullet the next time he bumps into me—or give him the satisfaction of knowing he was the catalyst of my failure.

I want to be happy.

So as I take my third drag of my last cigarette of 2019, I pray to a Deity I have a shaky belief in and tell myself that this is my rock bottom. It can’t possibly get any worse from here.

Or can it?

I suppose only my next move, and time, will tell.

[tiapandayblogs]

Why is Mental Health Management important to your Well-Being?

Our world is on the verge of being more mentally unstable than ever. With years of ignorance of mental health concerns, India is possibly facing a mental health epidemic. The theme for World Mental Health Day, 2022 is “Make Mental Health and well-being for all a global priority.” The Child Help Foundation strives by the word that Mental Health is at the core of our survival and security. It does not end at acknowledging that mental illness exists but goes beyond to resolve and realize that we may also be one of them. Thus, sensitivity and active work toward healing is the priority.

It is important to bring to the fore the mental health concerns that are common among us and not yet worked upon. Anxiety, Stress, and Eating Disorders are not just problems, they are inherently affecting our mental stability, productivity, relationships, parenting, and physical health.

Statistically, India has one of the highest prevalences of mental illnesses globally. Marking the tentatively reported cases, 56 million Indians suffer from depression and 38 million suffer from an anxiety disorder. Quoting the successful suicidal rates, every year about 200000 Indians take their lives.

As per the current trends, children are more at risk of carrying mental health illnesses because of the baggage of years of denial. We find children, adolescents, and young adults dealing with unstable home environments, violence and abuse in close relationships, scarcity of resources to seek help, financial distress, and insecure parenting. Evidently, these are the surface-level problems that can be tracked to actively work upon from a mental health provider's point of view.

5 ways to enhance your mental health management:

1. Identify and associate with what you are going through:

We have been brought up in a culture where it is very common to disregard our emotional needs and suppress them deep down in order to fit in. However, it does not go well in the long run as it spills out either in our work life in the form of stagnation or in our relationships in the form of abuse. Thus, to healthily deal with issues, it’s important to be in touch and aware of our feelings and the causes of our suffering.

2. Enable Communication among each other:

The feeling of belonging to a group or a family comes from conversation and communication. We often catch ourselves talking about a lot of things other than the real problem that concerns us. Practice communicating about yourself in your closed circles to stay in touch with your personal issues and behaviors.

3. Share emotions with your loved ones:

As humans, most of us go through similar feelings in our day-to-day living and those in major life transitions. With restricted and unshared lives with our parents, family, and friends, we are more likely to feel alone and left out amidst our suffering. Thus, sharing life in its raw form will ease the process of making it through difficult situations.

4. Prioritize your needs and self-care:

One’s mental health can be aided by serving one’s own needs and inculcating self-care habits. In a collectivistic culture, we are often wired to prioritize others’ demands over significant concerns. It traps us into a loop of unfulfilled expectations and puts us under immense stress and pressure to find fulfillment in the wrong places. It is recommended that we indulge in 1 hour of self-care activity by prioritizing to fulfill our mental and emotional needs.

5. Seek affordable therapy:

Mental health awareness has been on the peak of its rise in the past few years. It is important to note that an individual is equipped to feel their suffering but not to recognize the concern. In the plight of living in a strenuous and hustled environment, one should always seek therapy to be able to manage their mental well-being. It eliminates the risk of suppressed traumas and spills over physical health issues.

Source - https://childhelpfoundation.in/cii-blog/posts/Why-is-Mental-Health-Management-important-to-your-Well-Being

Listed here are some of the organizations that provide affordable therapy:

Mindpeers https://mindpeers.co/

Manntalks https://www.manntalks.org/

Elixir https://www.elixirhelps.in/

Our health goals cannot be met without considering the parameters of mental stability. In the absence of the right directives and knowledge, we tend to fall back upon unhealthy patterns of destructive behaviors. Thus, it’s unarguably necessary to cater to the importance of its impact on individual and social living and create a healthy space for all of us.

References:

https://thelogicalindian.com/mentalhealth/mental-health-indians-30811https://sproutsocial.com/social-media-holidays/world-mental-health-day/https://nationaltoday.com/world-mental-health-day/

[behealthy99]

The Effect of Diet on Mental Health

New Post has been published on https://behealthy99.com/the-effect-of-diet-on-mental-health/

The Effect of Diet on Mental Health

The brain controls and regulates most of the body’s vital functions, conscious or not. For this reason, it is essential that the brain receives a steady supply of fuel and oxygen. The fuel is obtained by metabolizing nutrients made available in the bloodstream, originating in the digested food.

The brain consumes 20% of the daily intake of calories, that is, about 400 (out of 2000) calories a day. Structurally, about 60% of the brain is fat, comprising of high cholesterol and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs).

Thus, the food one eats is directly linked to brain structure and function, and thus affects the working of the mind. Many studies have found that diets that are too rich in refined sugars are toxic to brain functioning because the high content of simple sugars stresses the pancreas and induces insulin resistance. The high sugar levels with compensatory insulin responses stimulate the counter-reactive surge of autonomic neurotransmitters like cortisol and glucagon.

These are known to produce increased anxiety, hunger and irritability. Moreover, they induce inflammatory and oxidative stress. This has been linked to an exacerbation of symptoms of depression and other mood disorders. These findings have led to the emerging field of nutritional psychiatry that traces relationships between food, feelings, gut microbiota, and human behavior.

  Image Credit: George Dolgikh/Shutterstock

Deficiency disorders and mood

The deficiency of nutrients like cobalamine, folate and zinc is known to be associated with symptoms of depression and dementia, cognitive decline and irritability. Both overeating and food insecurity are associated with mood and anxiety disorders.

Mental illness is ranked among the largest contributors to the global health burden, especially depression, which accounts for the major chunk of disability in the more developed countries, especially in the age group of 15-44 years. Therefore, it is crucial to explore nutritional strategies to ameliorate these conditions.

Not only do people eat differently when anxious or depressed, but these changes may occur in either direction. Conversely, depression may be the result, at least partly, of poor eating habits, or may become worsened by the inability of the patient to stop eating comfort foods and choose a healthy diet. Such inability may be financial, psychological, or iatrogenic.

Serotonin and the gut

Serotonin is a monoamine neurotransmitter that helps to control sleep and appetite, inhibit pain, and to regulate mood. About 95% of the serotonin is produced in the gut, which is rich in neurons – the enteric plexus contains a hundred million nerve cells. Thus, the gut is intimately involved in emotional regulation, pain perception, and vital physiological functions.

Interestingly, the function of these neurons and their secretion of serotonin, and other neurotransmitters, is closely regulated by the metabolic byproducts of the trillion or so bacteria that comprise the gut microbiome. These bacteria ensure epithelial barrier integrity for the intestine, preventing the entry of bacterial toxins and pathogens into the systemic circulation. They also prevent the spread of inflammation beyond the gut lumen, enhance nutrient absorption, and activate gut-brain neural pathways – the gut-brain axis.

Monoamine neurotransmitters are synthesized from amino acids in a process that is mediated by mineral-dependent cofactors. Both folate and vitamin B12 are essential for the methylation that occurs during these synthetic processes, also regulating the formation of homocysteine – a metabolite that is strongly linked to cardiovascular risk and depression.

Dietary fats and brain functioning

Anti-inflammatory fats such as omega-3 fatty acids (FAs) are known to be essential components of neuronal cell membranes, and also play a role in many vital neural processes such as neurotransmission, gene expression, neurogenesis and neuronal survival. They are also known to have antioxidant properties.

Omega-3 FAs are used to treat a number of psychological disorders, including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, bipolar depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A high omega-6 proportion is linked to a higher incidence of these conditions, especially the first two.

The standard Western diet is rich in omega-6 but low in omega-3 FAs, primarily because of the consumption of refined flours and sugars, and highly processed foods, and low amounts of seafood (including fish) and grass-fed beef.

Some studies have confirmed that diets that are richer in healthier carbohydrates and fats, and lower in refined and highly processed foods, such as the Japanese and Mediterranean diets, are linked to a reduction in the incidence of depression by anywhere between a quarter to over a third, compared to the standard American diet.

Inflammation and the diet

Inflammation of the nervous system is also important in the pathogenesis of mental illness, and this is also linked to the diet. Many biomarkers of inflammation, such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) were associated with a dietary pattern that was linked to a higher risk of depression over the next decade or so. This pattern included high simple sugars (sweetened drinks and refined flours), red meat and margarine (saturated fats), and little green or yellow vegetables, coffee, wine, or olive oil, which are all features of the stereotypical Western diet.

The high content of vegetables, fruits, grains, and seafood, with less dairy and meat content, and no refined foods, of the Mediterranean and Japanese diets, compares very favorably with the Western diet. The former uses small amounts of red wine and cheese or yogurt in the daily diet. The mechanism is thought to be via the brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF.

  Image Credit: Photosell13/Shutterstock

This important molecule is implicated in the plasticity and survival of neurons, and neurogenesis. It is reduced in many mental health conditions including depression, PTSD and schizophrenia, and is affected by many antidepressants that are commonly prescribed.

Not only so, but the former presents many of the fruits and vegetables in fermented form, which provides probiotics protecting the gut by enhancing the content of health-promoting gut microbes and reducing or preventing inflammation throughout the body.

Thus, including more foods with omega-3 FAs in the diet when on inflammation-inducing medications, not only prevents inflammatory changes but also prevents the induction of depression in such individuals, according to recent, admittedly early, work. Again, the Mediterranean diet promotes gut microbes that produce anti-inflammatory metabolites.

Of course, depressive tendencies or stressors may prevent the beneficial effects of healthy food from manifesting themselves as reduced inflammation or improved mood. Secondly, only some depressed individuals show this inflammatory tendency, which may mean that diet plays this role in only a proportion of people, perhaps with other inflammatory conditions or due to constitutional factors.

Conclusion

Many experts would recommend that people pay attention to the relationship between their diet and the foods they eat over a month or at least two weeks. If they could reduce or eliminate processed foods and sugars for this period of time, before bringing back these foods one by one, it would be instructive to notice how they feel.

Better eating strategies are essential to promote mental health and recovery from mental illness. It was over 2,000 years ago that the famous Greek physician Hippocrates said, “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”

Not only does the Mediterranean (and similar) diet affect the availability of the basic building blocks of the brain and neurotransmitters, including myelin, the neuronal membrane, and monoamine neurotransmitters, but it modulates key chemicals like BDNF to alter neuroplasticity, mutes system inflammation, and determines the health and state of the gut microbiome.

Many such traditional diets are known to include mostly nutritious whole foods without much processing. The role of a dietary specialist in helping patients with mentally ill-health to choose approaches that promote the ability to take care of oneself and enhance one’s health is very important and should be encouraged.

As one set of authors comment,

This message supports the idea that creating environments and developing measures that promote healthy, nutritious diets, while decreasing the consumption of highly processed and refined “junk” foods may provide benefits even beyond the well known effects on physical health, including improved psychological wellbeing.”

Further Reading

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Damage to Children’s Education — And Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime

Before the pandemic, 16-year-old Na’ryen Cayou had everything he needed. He had his own room. A partial scholarship to a boys’ prep school. A spot playing trombone in the marching band, performing in parades all over New Orleans.

Then covid-19 blew through the Big Easy like a hurricane, washing away nearly everything that helped him feel safe and secure. Schools shut down. His mom lost her job and couldn’t make the rent. Their landlord evicted them.

Na’ryen and his mom now live with his grandmother. His mom sleeps on one couch; he sleeps on the other. He spent half the school year in virtual learning rather than in class with friends. Although he has struggled with math and chemistry, his mother, Nakia Lewis, said there’s no money for a tutor.

“He went through a real deep depression,” said Lewis, 45, a single mother with two older daughters living on their own. “This is nothing anyone could have prepared them for.”

As Americans crowd into restaurants, line up at movie theaters and pack their bags for summer travel, people are understandably eager to put the pandemic behind them. Yet kids like Na’ryen won’t rebound quickly. Some won’t recover at all.

After more than a year of isolation, widespread financial insecurity and the loss of an unprecedented amount of classroom time, experts say many of the youngest Americans have fallen behind socially, academically and emotionally in ways that could harm their physical and mental health for years or even decades.

“This could affect a whole generation for the rest of their lives,” said Dr. Jack Shonkoff, a pediatrician and director of the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University. “All kids will be affected. Some will get through this and be fine. They will learn from it and grow. But lots of kids are going to be in big trouble.”

Many kids will go back to school this fall without having mastered the previous year’s curriculum. Some kids have disappeared from school altogether, and educators worry that more students will drop out. Between school closures and reduced instructional time, the average U.S. child has lost the equivalent of five to nine months of learning during the pandemic, according to a report from McKinsey & Co.

Educational losses have been even greater for some minorities. Black and Hispanic students — whose parents are more likely to have lost jobs and whose schools were less likely to reopen for in-person instruction — missed six to 12 months of learning, according to the McKinsey report.

Missing educational opportunities doesn’t just deprive kids of better careers; it can also cost them years of life. In study after study, researchers have found that people with less education die younger than those with more.

Schools across the country were closed for an average of 54 days in spring 2020, and many provided little to no virtual instruction, said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. A study he co-authored found the learning that kids missed during that time could shorten an elementary school boy’s life by eight months and a girl’s by more than five months.

The total loss of life would be even larger when factoring in the loss of instructional time in the school year that just ended, Christakis said. “We’ve interrupted children’s education, and it’s going to have a significant impact on their health and longevity,” he said. “The effects will linger a very long time.”

Assaulted on All Sides

The double hit from the pandemic, which has impoverished millions of children and deprived them of classroom time, will be too much for some to overcome.

“Living in poverty, even as a child, has health consequences for decades to come,” said Dr. Hilary Seligman, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “Children in poverty will have higher risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”

A growing body of research shows that poverty reshapes the way children’s brains develop, altering both the structure of the brain and the chemicals that transmit signals. These changes can alter how children react to stress and reduce their long-term health and educational achievements.

“Adversity literally shapes the developing brain,” said Shonkoff, of Harvard. “It affects your memory, your ability to organize information, to control impulses.”

Chronic stress in children can lead to persistent inflammation that damages the immune system, raises blood sugar and accelerates hardening of the arteries. The heart disease that kills someone in midlife can actually begin in childhood, Shonkoff said.

“What happens to children early on doesn’t just affect early language and school readiness, but the early foundations of lifelong health,” he said.

More Kids Going Hungry

The pandemic has deprived millions of children of school-related services that normally blunt the harm caused by poverty.

From March to May 2020, students missed more than 1.1 billion free or reduced-price meals that would have been provided in school.

Children who experience even occasional “food insecurity” suffer two to four times as many health problems as other kids at the same income level, said Dr. Deborah Frank, director of the Grow Clinic for Children at Boston Medical Center.

Kids who don’t consistently eat nutritious meals are more likely to develop anemia, more likely to be hospitalized and more susceptible to lead poisoning, Frank said. They also are more likely to behave aggressively and suffer from hyperactivity, depression and anxiety.

The consequences of food insecurity last well into adulthood, she said, increasing the risk of substance abuse, arrest and suicidal thoughts. “There’s going to be educational and emotional fallout that won’t disappear right away,” Frank said. “These kids have endured a year and a half of deprivation. You can’t sweep all that under the rug.”

Kids at the Breaking Point

Young people are already showing signs of strain.

The proportion of emergency room visits related to mental health among kids 12 to 17 increased 31% from 2019 to 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although overall suicide deaths haven’t increased during the pandemic, as many feared, teens are making more attempts. ERs treated 50% more adolescent girls and 4% more boys for suspected suicide attempts in February and March 2021 than in those months the year before.

Diagnoses of obsessive-compulsive disorder have soared 41% among girls 12 to 18, according to a June report from Epic Health Research Network. Diagnoses of eating disorders have jumped 38% among girls and 5% among boys.

Many children separated from their peers during the pandemic have been depressed and anxious, said Dr. Lisa Tuchman, chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

“Mental illness thrives in isolation,” Tuchman said. “The longer the behaviors and thoughts persist, the more entrenched they become and the harder they are to interrupt.”

Falling Behind in School

The loss of educational opportunities has been far more extensive than many realize. Although the majority of students were back in classrooms by the end of the last school year, most spent a large part of the year in virtual learning.

And while some students thrive in virtual classes, studies generally find they provide an inferior education to in-person instruction, partly because students are less engaged. Just 60% of students consistently participated in distance learning, recent surveys found.

Test scores show students have fallen behind in math and reading. And those scores likely underestimate the damage, given that some of the most vulnerable kids weren’t able to report to school for the exams.

An estimated 3 million marginalized students — including those who are homeless or in foster care — received no instruction during the past school year, either because they had no computer or internet access, had to leave school to work or faced other challenges, according to Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit that focuses on disadvantaged students.

Less-educated students can expect to earn less after they leave school.

Lost educational time will cost the average child $61,000 to $82,000 in lifetime earnings, McKinsey concluded. Lifetime earning losses are predicted to be twice as great for Black and Hispanic students as for whites.

“Many of the teens I see have given up on school and are working instead,” said Dr. Sara Bode, a pediatrician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s helping their families in the short term, but what does it mean for their future?”

Learning From Katrina

Experience with natural disasters and teacher strikes suggests that even relatively short interruptions in education can set children back years, said McKinsey analyst Jimmy Sarakatsannis, co-author of a 2020 report, “COVID-19 and Student Learning in the United States: The Hurt Could Last a Lifetime.”

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, for example, it disrupted the education of 187,000 Louisiana public school students.

Katrina left 80% of the city under water. Although New Orleans students missed an average of five weeks of learning, children wound up two years behind peers not affected by the hurricane, said Douglas Harris, professor and chair of economics at Tulane University.

Na’ryen Cayou was just 2 months old when Katrina submerged his house, leaving the family homeless. He contracted whooping cough in an emergency shelter, the first of four moves in eight months. His sister, O’re’ion Lewis, then 4, didn’t attend school at all that year. When she finally began prekindergarten at age 5, the other kids “were already ahead of her,” mom Nakia Lewis said. For a time, teachers even mislabeled O’re’ion as having dyslexia. It took five years — from prekindergarten until fourth grade — before she finally caught up with her peers, Lewis said.

It will be years before researchers know how far behind the pandemic will have left American kids.

After Katrina, 14% to 20% of students never returned to school, according to the McKinsey report. “As kids fall further behind, they feel hopeless; they don’t engage,” said Sarakatsannis, one of its authors.

Under normal circumstances, high school students who miss more than 10 days of school are 36% more likely to drop out. Based on the number of absences during the pandemic, dropout rates could increase by 2% to 9%, with up to 1.1 million kids quitting school, Sarakatsannis said.

Communities need to find ways to repair the damage children have suffered, said Dr. Gabrielle Shapiro, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Children, Adolescents and their Families. “How we behave as a society now will determine the depth of the impact on the younger generation.”

Nakia Lewis is hoping for better days.

O’re’ion is now 20 and studying nursing at community college. Although her classes were virtual last year, she expects to attend class in person in the fall.

Lewis recently landed a job as a manager at a Shoney’s restaurant and is looking for an affordable home. She looks forward to reclaiming her furniture, which went into storage — at $375 a month — when she was evicted.

She said she’s relieved that Na’ryen’s mood has improved. He found a summer job working part time at a food market and will begin marching band practice this summer.

“He is happy and I’m happy for him,” Lewis said. “Now I just have to worry about everything else.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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