#time to do grounding exercises

[ineloquent-tumbling]

Me: Man, I don’t feel so great right now.

Me: *realizes that I’m in the process of putting teeth marks on my thumb*

Me: Ah, I see. I am on the verge of a panic attack.

[lexosaurus]

I know that was a shitpost for the latest Danny Phantom fandom meme, but I'm genuinely impressed and how authentic it sounds. How much of Dash's monologue is real advice, and how do you know all of that? Do you work out?

Yes I'm so sorry to inform my good people of Tumblr that I've secretly been a part of the gym fandom for all this time. I've only recently come out as a gymbro in this phandom via my creation of the current dp gym bro au meme that I've forced upon everyone in this good holy christian space. I mix whey protein into my overnight oats, I track my macros, and I have a closet full of Gym Girlie Outfits™️.

And just know it's a badge of honor that I carry to be able to say I've converted multiple members of the Danny Phantom phandom into regular gym goers as well 💪

[lovers-instead]

Sapphic YA Book Rec: Good Moon Rising by Nancy Garden

1996 follow-up to Annie on My Mind, this time featuring 2 girls who compete for the lead role in their high school theater department.

Links to download:

Internet Archive (to borrow)

Anna's Archive

Z-Library

[binch-i-might-be]

my basement neighbour stopped me to ask if I was running my washing machine every day because the neighbours right under me kept hearing something and I was like "well that can't be me because I haven't used my washing machine in like two weeks due to me not wearing much clothes generally" and we agreed that our fucked up top floor neighbours were probably up to some shenanigans

well thinking about it it's probably my walking pad they hear. which is fucked up because idk where to put that thing so they'll not hear it so much. I don't even know if it would fit in my bedroom

[prometheuswounds]

i release what no longer serves cunt or whatever

[demarogue]

Gettin' Through the Holidays Mental Health Tricks

If y'all are anything like me, this time of year is triggering AF. Here are some small, very easy grounding exercises that I was taught by my therapist, basically in order of how much I like them for this rage-inducing season. You make like them in a different order, depending on your rage-to-despair ratio.

Push a wall: literally go up to a wall and try to push it over. Really try. I promise you won't push it over, but give it your best shot. Try to hold it as long as you can, and then take a breather and assess whether you need to repeat. Why it works: This is a quick, physical expulsion of the fight-or-flight feeling. It's a bit like punching a wall, but without the potential to hurt yourself/look scary/damage things. You can even do it in front of people and say you're stretching, they'll never know (unless the wall actually falls down, but this will not happen, I assure you).

Shake like a dog: Animals shake to release stress, and you are also an animal. Setting aside time to just shake it out, as vigorously as you can, arms and legs, face, stick your tongue out, pretend you're shaking like a wet dog. You can dance instead, if that feels better, and you can do this to music, but basically the more unhinged you can be, the better. If you are in a place you can scream, scream too! Why it works: like the above, this is a release of pent-up stress and anxiety. Especially if your rage-to-woe ratio is high, some kind of physical exertion is often the best way to burn through the cortisol and adrenaline you're building up.

Bilateral Tapping: Cross your arms over your chest so that your fingertips are at your shoulders, and slowly tap, one hand at a time, back and forth, for about a minute. Breathe slowly. Why it works: This is weird as hell, but because this engages both sides of your brain, it helps override the activity of the amygdala, which is the part of your brain that Makes The Fear. If you're being literally triggered in a situation, i.e. you're having a trauma response, or reliving some family trauma, this is a good one.

Box Breathing: From a comfortable position (can really be seated, laying down or standing), inhale slowly for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, then repeat. You can do it for shorter counts or longer counts, but if you vary the counts make sure the exhale is longer than the inhale. You can close your eyes or leave them open. Why it works: This exercise helps you move from a sympathetic (activated) nervous system response to a parasympathetic (balanced) response. I do this one every day, and it's a good gateway to meditation. Especially helpful in anxious or tense situations, but I find if I'm very triggered I need one of the other ones first, or it can make anxiety worse. Breathwork is amazing but not usually as a first exercise if you're very activated, or have been activated a long time.

Ice: Lots of ways to do this one – hands in cold water for 30 seconds, ice pack on the back of your neck, dip your entire face into a bowl of ice water (this one's the most effective). Why it works: I kinda think this is hilarious, but this activates your mammalian dive reflex. It immediately slows your heart-rate, so if you are feeling your blood pressure and heart rate rising, this one is very good. The only reason this one's at the bottom of my list is because I hate being cold.

I wish you all a very get-through-the-holidays-without-hurting-yourself. Take time alone if you need it.

[past-j]

there is no practical reason for me to wait until november to upgrade my iphone 8, but i think it's spiritually healthier to sit on it for a few weeks

i need to exercise my "wait for it" muscle instead of impulse buying this (even though it's definitely time for it)

[monsternobility]

therapy homework this week is to try things that will make me present in my body. we're trying to get through that. problem is i have NO IDEA WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE PRESENT so i have NO IDEA IF IM DOING IT RIGHT

[lavender-lady-777]

"The Bride" not having a name outside of her relation to a man she wants nothing to do with. Her body being constantly objectified and sexualized before she was even conceived. Her face, her torso, even each of her individual, rotting limbs being carefully selected to fit the sexual preferences of an absolute stranger. Her skull being beaten in and manhandled during a man's jealous outburst, her head rolling to the ground like an inanimate object. The story of Marilyn Monroe's body. The way women cannot rest even in death.

The constant expectation of who The Bride will be before she even is. The way patriarchal societies buy pink onesies and Barbie cribs and headbands with bows before a baby is even born. The stain of forever being "just" a woman. The way this mirrors Eric's flowers, the way he love-bombs her and lays ownership to her before she's even developed consciousness.

The way Eric insists that his bride doesn't need to develop basic language skills or even a rudimentary understanding of the world around her, because her education doesn't directly benefit him. The way he was created to usher in a new era of scientific discovery for mankind, while she was created only to please him. The Biblical story of Eve being carved from Adam's rib. The way organized religion trains women to believe that their only use lies in being obedient and subservient to the men around them.

The Bride being continuously punished for her sexual awakening, for any exercise of her own autonomy or free will. The way the only “love” she has ever known was brutally murdered because she refused to cater to the expectations of the men around her, because she denied the title that was thrust upon her at birth. The way that men have always done this to women— labeling us as "jezebels" or "harlots" or "whores" or "bitches" or "sluts" for refusing to fall into a role we never consented to performing.

And, of course, the fact that Eric continues to feel entitled to her body even after she tells him no in every conceivable way. "Why won't she let me touch her?!" The parallels between his behavior and that of so many incels who believe that women exist solely to serve their purposes. "She is to love me!" The way that, after losing her, he spends his time partying on yachts with models and playgirls, because that's all women are to him... just pretty objects. The way he bastardizes the word "love" because he's never taken the time to know or love her, not really.

The inherent trauma of her birth and nature— the way the horrorshow of her creation reflects the unspoken horror of every woman's creation. "She is but a cluster of fear and not knowing."

Ohhhhh Mary Shelley I fear you would love this show...

[beeseverywhen]

Not in the US so can't speak for what's happening there, but I've def noticed here that healthcare workers are struggling with dealing with sicker patients than they felt they were getting before covid and lots of them are mentioning a lack of immunity thanks to lockdowns. every time I hear it I can't help but think that the increasing desperation thanks to years of underfunding that's really beginning to have an impact since covid (because the pandemic served as the last straw on the camels back there AND because it showed our government that they could neglect the vulnerable to the degree that they were dying by the thousands and still nobody bothered to blame them.) Is a contributing factor in this and I don't understand why nobody is mentioning it???

We're getting sick because we've spent decades being bled dry and now we're hungry, stressed and being worked to the bone. Meanwhile we aren't getting any kind of return on the money we're pumping in to the healthcare system and our governments aren't doing shit to address health inequalities or any of the factors contributing to everyone's poor health.

If you look at covid death statistics, if you look at which countries are currently suffering from supply problems; a job market bursting with unfilled vacancies, civil unrest and protests, strained healthcare systems, and all the rest; the countries at the top are those that have allowed capitalism to call the shots for the past century, more than the rest. That is why the UK and America have been so badly impacted. Its no accident that we are paying so heavily, this system started with us. We forced it on the rest of the world and now, we're the first to pay the price. There is a direct correlation between the impact being felt post covid and a countries wealth divide and I'm tired of everyone ignoring that.

I look around me and People are going hungry, the food they can afford to buy is lacking in basic nutrients, of course people are sicker! Even if you can afford them, the shops keep running out of vegetables! Our health system was already breaking and then, we were hit by a pandemic it was completely unprepared for (tho it should have been) and now, people are getting way more ill than they need to before they finally reach hospital. When they get there, the hospitals are understaffed (thanks to years of underfunded budgets and the extreme stress so many health care workers were put under), we keep having drug shortages because our country keep straight up refusing to pay how much things cost, and what they are willing to pay, goes to pay about ten profiteering middle men at each stage of the supply chain.

People are massively stressed thanks to the cumulative weight of a completely broken capitalist system and those in charge are more worried about lining their pockets for as long as they can until the whole thing collapses, rather than actually trying to address any problems. Stress IS something that's known to weaken immune systems so why are we blaming something that MAY affect them??? Extreme rises in energy costs have meant everyone's spent a winter without adequate heating (even those that can afford it are revolting at the increase and so are trying to cut costs by using less energy.) Again, insufficiently heated homes are also known to affect immunity. And that's just the people who still have safe homes! Masses of people have been made homeless recently thanks to rising rents and mortgages which were already unaffordable, our housing stock is largely dangerous, with homes falling in to disrepair because landlords are barely regulated and when they do break laws they go unprotected.

Is anyone surprised that so many people are getting so ill and not getting better? Cause I'm not.

It's startlingly obvious when you start looking at the health divide between those who have spent 40 years subject to the whims of poorly restricted capitalism and those able to opt out. Medical technology is improving, but healthy life expectancy is now dropping year on year, because there are more people living here without the capital to turn away from jobs that will break them, than there are those whose inherited wealth opens doors away from employers that'll ask you to pay the price of bodily health, so they might strengthen profit margins. Its just basic averages. 1% of our citizens are standing on the backs of 99% of us and wondering why more and more of that 99% are getting sicker and sicker. The labour market for working class people has been allowed to drain its workers dry for years now. The progress made in the early to mid 20th century has slowly been worn away at, with the labour laws we fought for, only being accessible for an ever decreasing number of people. The laws are still in place but no low wage employer bothers to follow them any more than they have to. Do you know how many people I know who've been working without breaks, going unpaid for extra hours, been forced to follow unsafe working practices that they know are illegal and then being forced to lie to protect the employer that put them in that position? The people being broken by companies raking in billions, as they flaunt labour laws, don't have any means to access justice! If you complain, you lose your job. If you take them to court that costs money and that company is willing to drag out proceedings for years till you run out of the money needed to keep things going.

When i look at how much money is being wasted in government budgets, while the people responsible for making that money, see little return; I can't help but think of various theories for why certain societies in history have collapsed. (If you want to be really worried about the state of things, read the Wikipedia page on societal collapse. Spoiler: most of the potential causes of societal collapse have already begun in America and the UK. That guy who wrote that article saying America was already past the point of collapse might have been right.) One theory behind the bronze age collapse is just that... societies became too complex. A society where the 1% are given too much power over the 99% becomes one great big pyramid scheme. Unnecessary burecracy at every level (designed to squeeze as much wealth possible for the person overseeing that level) results in those at the bottom, working themselves to death and still going hungry. The theory goes that there comes a point, in societies like that, where the workers look at how they are living and just...walk away. They decide that the security once offered by that society isn't worth what it's costing them and fuck off to become farmers, preferring a life of hard work and little security, to what they had been living. Without the workers, the system breaks down. The only people getting fed are the ones growing the food. All this stupid stratification. Allowing every supply chain, business and institution to become unnecessarily complex just so on each level the people in charge can let their mates get a foot in on the profits. All these middlemen. Business consultants. Supply chains allow for a product to be sent back and forth from country to country just so more people get a cut. Its no different to any other pyramid scheme so why the hell are we allowing it.

We need to start telling our politicians to show some goddamn accountability for this shit. Stop accepting them skirting responsibility for being at best: Inept and at worst deliberately negligent. We all need to stop supporting a system that's hurting us all. In the hope that we might be one of the lucky ones. That's not the reality of things. We'll only get out of this hole we've inadvertently dug ourselves in to, if we stop fighting each other and work together to demand change.

You know how sometimes you catch someone in a lie, and so they tell an even bigger lie to try and cover up the first lie they told?

Well, that’s happening right now.

Last winter, a handful of celebrity doctors went on mainstream news networks to assure us that Omicron was “mild.” They carpet-bombed us with articles and tweets, doing their best to brainwash everyone.

They were wrong.

In the end, real science junked that idea. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that Omicron killed more people than previous variants, even when adjusting for other factors. Another study by doctors at Massachusetts General and Harvard Medical found that Omicron was just as deadly. In fact, “the risks of hospitalization and mortality were nearly identical.” As it turns out, the entire idea of “mild” Omicron was based on an old, flawed idea known as the law of declining virulence, developed by a doctor who was studying tick-borne disease in cows. It was debunked decades ago.

Most epidemiologists know that viruses don’t magically evolve to become milder. Virus evolution is random and chaotic.

In some cases, viruses evolve to become more deadly.

A handful of actual scientists tried to explain all this last winter, including disease experts at Johns Hopkins. A handful of other established experts spoke out against this myth. As a microbiologist at Penn State told Politifact, “You can’t just say it’s going to become nicer.” They were largely ignored, because everyone already sort of believed the misinformation. If they knew it was based on a study about cows, they probably would’ve thought twice.

This year, the makers of “it’s mild” are back.

They’re selling “immunity debt.”

We should be skeptical.

Schools and daycares are sending letters home to parents talking about this “immunity debt.” They’re saying that healthy children are getting sicker, even dying, because they weren’t exposed to enough germs over the last two years. Newspapers and TV stations across the country are running with it, proposing it as a “possible reason” for this year’s explosion in pediatric hospitalizations. Meanwhile, major medical organizations have sent a letter to President Biden urging him to declare an emergency over an “alarming surge of pediatric hospitalizations” due to a range of respiratory viruses, including Covid.

A lot of people are drinking the “immunity debt” kool-aid.

After all, Americans have believed for generations that getting sick is “good for you.” We think our immune system behaves like a muscle. We worry that if we’re not giving it a workout, we’ll get weak.

It’s a myth, just like the law of declining virulence.

Here’s why.

[satoruxx]

boyfriend toji asks you to workout with him all the time, but not in the way you’re thinking. you’re his incentive, a little prize for working so hard.

so of course he cages you underneath him as he does push ups, claiming a victory kiss each time he lowers himself to the ground. honestly the way you laugh and giggle is far more satisfying than the actual workout part of it, his lips quirking into a half smile each time he pushes back up.

“you’re so lame,” you laugh, patting his flexing bicep and he rolls his eyes.

“what’s wrong with havin’ a prize? i’m workin’ so hard,” he stresses the last word with an over exaggerated sigh.

“yeah right like this isn’t the easiest possible thing for you—”

a heavy kiss—his favorite way of shutting you up. he pulls back, expression going smug at your dazed reaction.

“you sure do talk a lot for someone who’s enjoying it.” he quips.

and you do enjoy it—honestly you’d take any excuse to steal affection from the hulking wolf of a man that is your boyfriend, especially when he’s always so willing to give it.

some days he’ll switch it up and ask you to get on his back as he does his push ups, because god knows he’s strong and he can handle you so easily.

and he likes the way you loop your arms around his neck, likes the way you squeal as he playfully tries to bite your fingers when they get too close to his face.

“i think i’ll just stay up here,” you comment from atop his back, and toji can hear your smile.

“oh yeah?” he grunts as he lowers himself to the ground.

“mhm.” your fingers drum over his back. “you look pretty good like this. i can boss you around and everything.”

“hah—” an evil smirk, even as sweat drips down his temple. “watch your mouth, kid. don’t push your luck.”

you laugh, he grins. somehow you just make the whole process that much more fun for him.

toji is selfish too. bad enough that he has you trapped either under him or on top of him as he does push ups for as long as he can. but once he’s done and you’re about to go do your own work he’s grabbing your wrist with that trademark smirk going, “hey i’m not done yet.”

and then you find yourself holding his feet down as he casually does sit ups, and of course each time he makes it back up he’s kissing you. you giggle each time, leaning your weight onto your palms to keep his legs steady as you peak over his knees. the sound tickles his ears—infectious.

“aren’t you tired yet?” you call out, tilting your head with a teasing smile. toji pulls himself up, abs flexing as his bulky arms stay put behind his head.

“tired?” he scoffs, lips brushing over yours. he pulls back just slightly, hooded eyes boring into yours. “i got my energy right here.”

he’s ridiculous. selfish and utterly ridiculous. it comes to a point where he refuses to do his exercises if you’re not there, claiming that “it’s no fun workin’ hard if there’s nothin’ to work hard for.”

but obviously half of the time he ends up forgetting about the workout anyway, grabbing at your waist to pull you into his lap as he presses his mouth to yours eagerly—one little prize already managing to distract him.

for someone so strong, toji can be embarrassingly weak when it comes to you.

oh well, no harm done. he knows he can get his exercise in a different way—and you have no problem with that either.

[tide-locked]

i feel like people forget that sometimes characters in fic are written like that because it's a reflection of real life.

people have sex without setting boundaries. people have unprotected sex without talking about their sexual histories or producing recent sti tests. people play with kink without discussing it ahead of time or establishing a safeword. they have anal without 'enough' prep or lube—they may even prefer it like that.

and none of this is really a fantasy. it's all pretty normal. you can feel that it's inappropriately normalised, and you'd probably be right! but it is normalised: one study found that 58% of female undergraduate students on the campus studied had been choked during sex. 20% of those students said that they'd never been asked if it was ok; another 30% said they'd only sometimes been asked if they consented. fully half! (non-paywalled journal article on choking during sex here, including these numbers.) despite a rise in stis of all sorts, condom use is declining. (pdf link to the full text of this study about declining condom use in the us; aidsmap article about an australian study with similar results.)

even when people do talk about things—sex or anything else—they communicate imperfectly. 'yeah, but don't go too far' is consenting and setting a boundary, and also relying that the person you're talking to has the same metric for 'too far' that you do. for some people, 'the trash needs to go out' is a neutral, factual observation; for others, it's a request that the person they're speaking to take out the trash.

even when people understand each other perfectly, people react unpredictably to things sometimes! we behave irrationally! people laugh uncontrollably at funerals, or get angry at the straw that broke their back rather than the enormous load they were already carrying. they get scared and lash out at people trying to help them. when hurt, most people do not instinctively reach for therapy-approved grounding exercises and 'i feel' statements.

pretty much any bad choice that characters could conceivably make is a choice that people make in real life, on purpose, all the time. people do things that can have catastrophic, life-changing effects because it felt like a good idea at the time, or they're leaning into the vibe, or they just didn't think about it all that much, or an infinite number of other reasons.

fiction isn't intended as a guide on the best, safest, and most responsible ways to live your life, and fanfic isn't any different. it's not a narrative flaw to let characters do things that are messy or harmful or downright stupid—it's a reflection of what people are actually like, and not something that authors should feel they have to apologise for.

[mycroftrh]

“Tim,” Bruce says, staring fixedly at a smudge on the wall. “Would you care to explain to me why the Justice League has received a notice of public indecency charges for two affiliated superheroes.”

Tim gazes intently at a piece of lint on the ceiling. “I would not.”

“Tim.”

“I would assume,” Tim tells the lint, “that the Hall of Justice was the most accessible address, as they didn’t know how to send the notice to the heroes in question directly.”

“Tim.”

“…and potentially, the heroes were twenty feet above the ground at the time of the incident and did not realize they were visible to any other parties, such as, for example, possibly, a cop.”

“I see,” Bruce answers the smudge solemnly. “Perhaps,” he says, “the heroes in question could exercise higher situational awareness in future.”

“Perhaps.”

“And perhaps,” Bruce’s voice cracks as he addresses the smudge, “they should review protocol seventeen-dash-two-five, on the health considerations in human-Kryptonian relations, and - “ he pauses and looks almost appealingly at the smudge, as though hoping it will give him permission to exit the conversation - “and protocol twenty-three-dash-four, on the health considerations and safety concerns of aerial relations.”

Tim makes a small noise in his throat. “Perhaps,” he says, “they have already reviewed these, but were under psychological duress at the time and failed to properly implement all relevant procedures.”

“I assume they will do so in any subsequent similar scenarios.”

“Most definitely,” Tim tells the lint fervently.

“Right,” Bruce says to the smudge. “Good talk.”

[drdemonprince]

any advice for coping with being on the receiving end of a public callout ?

Oh yes:

Do not acknowledge the callout publicly. It will only further its spread, lend it legitimacy, cause you to be interpreted as guilty, and convey to anyone who bears you ill will that you are rattled and feeling socially threatened.

Do not act out of urgency. One of the ways that cancelled people get themselves in far worse trouble is by spiraling due to anxiety and rushing to issue a statement about what has happened, or to attempt to socially manage public impressions about what has happened. Do not do this. Anything that you say will be picked apart and used against you. The situation is truly not as urgent as it might feel. A lot of times, doing nothing and being quiet is the best way to proceed, and the dust will settle better if you do.

Do not issue a public apology. If you truly feel that you have wronged someone, that conflict should be worked out in private with the people you have directly affected. You do not owe the anonymous public audience a damn thing. Do not apologize for something you don't honestly believe that you have done wrong. Take time and really think about what happened, and seek the counsel of people whom you trust in PRIVATE.

Do not attempt to disprove the callout unless you have crystal clear, smoking gun evidence that the person who accused you is actually victimizing you. And even then, probably don't do it. I have only seen a disproof of a callout work ONCE, and that was when Juniper Abernathy revealed the person cancelling her had been abusing her. Even if the facts are on your side, acknowledging the accusations will only make more people aware of them, give your detractors ground to criticize your every word, and will muddy the waters and make people find the situation confusing and troubling rather than clear.

GET THE FUCK OFFLINE. Delete your social media apps for the time being. Turn off notifications. Turn off DMs requests. Change your settings so that you only ever hear from people you already follow (I do this, on the advice of Philosophy Tube). Get away from the computer.

Connect with IRL friends. When you're wrapped up in a cancellation, the negative opinions of a handful of foaming at the mouth freaks loom way larger than they actually are. And social media dramatically skews our sense of social priorities such that the approval rating of complete strangers starts to seem more important than people we actually know, and trust, and who actually know us. Go get a meal with a buddy. Watch a dumb movie. Talk to your grandma about her plans for her garden. Surround yourself with real people you care about and focus on their life and problems, to help put things in perspective.

Find distracting, active, rewarding activities that bring you out of the digital space and into physical reality. Not everyone is talking about you, not everybody hates you, most people have no fucking clue what has been said about you, and most people do not give a fuck about you (that's good). There are so many areas of life that are completely fucking untouched by what a bunch of social media power users have to say online. Go volunteer to clean up a park, run some errands, take an exercise class, foster a dog, regrout your bathroom, knit a hat. Even if the worst case scenario happens and a cancellation sticks, it's really only among a certain very vocal group of miserable fucking people. There is a whole world around you that will not ever care, and you will have a life outside of this.

Good luck!!

[little-saw]

tips to caring for littles who suffer from:

emotional dysregulation, hyper empathy,

and harsh moodswings !!

• develop grounding techniques to bring your little back to earth when they spiral. (breathing exercises, hand squeezing, observation games, etc.)

• remind them that what they're feeling is only big right now, and will pass.

• offer reassurance and spend time with them. Do not get angry if your little is easily upset or agitated.

• if the source of the moodswing or dysregulation is removable, try to get your little or the cause away from the other.

• find distractions to help your baby cope. (tv, games, toys, coloring, etc.)

• offer to talk with them about their big feelings and / or listen.

• if they're comfortable with it, take over bigger tasks and set down rules to prevent harm. (Ex: earlier bedtimes, no exceptions.)

• show love towards your little, and communicate your feelings aswell.

• encourage your little to be open about their moodswings the moment they have them. Preventing further damage or fear for both parties.

• if your little is experiencing hyper empathy towards another party, assure them they're a good person for feeling on the other's behalf, but remind them that they're their own person.

• if your little is neglecting themselves for others, step in and stop them from doing so if safe.

As someone who experiences big emotions very quickly, and has symptoms of hyper empathy as well as bpd. I have a hard time distinguishing my emotions, I hope this post helps others like me ^^ feel free to add your own tips on!

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

hi, i wanted to ask what you think about those japanese zoo's training exercises were someone dresses up as an animal and pretends to have escaped and all that, are they effective? what do U.S zoo's do to train for things like that?

They look silly, but they're a real emergency drill! They force people to think through how they'd problem-solve in real time and in the physical space, which is a very different experience than just thinking about it.

There's no consistent requirement for emergency drills in the US federal regulations for zoos, but there is a contingency planning one. Facilities licensed by the USDA have to identify and create plans for addressing likely emergencies they may have to deal with, which is everything from like natural disasters to animal escapes. That's all done as paperwork and provided to the government to prove they've done it.

BUT. That doesn't mean that zoos and other animal facilities don't do more planning on their own. Some of the third-party accreditations (it might be all of them but I don't have the docs in front of me to confirm) require regular drills for all types of emergency scenarios.

Now there's a slight problem there - a real escape drill, run fully on grounds with real people and stand-in animal, interferes with the daily operations of the zoo. You might not have to physically shut all the guests into buildings during a practice leopard escape, but you do need them to not get in the way, and you don't want to scare people who think a drill is real, etc. So there's an alternate option.

US zoos frequently run emergency management drills as TTRGPs!

Like, they use a printed scale map of the zoo and roll dice to randomize the situation. This is absolutely recommended as a strategy by the Zoo and Aquariums All Hazard Partnership: there's a whole webpage about it, including instructions for the Drill Master.

There are in-person drills, of course, because you have to practice dealing with these problems in meatspace. But a lot of them are done tabletop! I cannot express the extent of my mirth when I first encountered this in the wild at a conference about a decade ago, when the idea was really taking off. It was Very Serious Zoo People on a Very Serious Topic about preventing Really Bad Things from happening... and then suddenly there was a d20 on the screen.