#to learn it’s just my brain doing what it needs to cope and process <3 <3

[phagodyke]

weekend melancholy is starting to kick in >~<

[bleue-flora]

In fact, as least for me, the characters aren’t even objects as much as they are ideas, events, circumstances, emotions and feelings. It is for me to take my feelings in life and to express them in a concrete way that makes sense. Trying to deal with how I feel trapped and tortured in/by life despite not being literally trapped or tortured through the actual imprisonment of a character into hell in a box. In this way, it is very helpful as it allows you to explain, further tackle, understand and express how you feel in a way that isn’t as hard to rectify. In other words, taking your feelings to project onto a character in order to allow yourself to feel it and express in a way you otherwise can not. This projection of making feelings more concrete can often be the cause of self-harm - taking the pain you feel emotionally and turning it into something physical to help you grapple with how you feel. So, do whatever to your characters you want, allow yourself to cope, address, confront, express and process. It does not make you a bad person or vile or twisted. It does not mean you have any cruel or violent intentions whatsoever. It can be a creative expression of emotion in the same way a piece of art is. So let it out and allow yourself to write and read and draw guilt free because it’s ok to feel things and it’s certainly a more positive and meaningful way than other means, plus it can bring people together to enjoy each other’s pain and the beautiful mess going on in our minds.

This has been your PSA from my qualified and published therapist.

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

heyy I have a question but I'm kinda embarrassed about it so idk?

how much of a high libido is normal for a teenager? around 15 years? because like I've been taught that puberty makes you horny, but all everyone was always talking and making jokes about was cus males going through that, and I'm not a cis dude

I was just wondering because like it feels wrong sometimes to think about it that much even though it feels good to but like -I also don't really know how to say this- it also feels like I'm using sexual thoughts and fantasies and stuff to distract myself and to repress the stuff going on in my life? like I can feel my brain switch from "I'm gonna have a breakdown" to "how about horny?" in a couple of seconds and idk if that's normal? or healthy for that matter lol

idk what to say have a nice day and any advice is appreciated<3

(do you do named anons? if so, can I be fox anon?)

hi fox anon,

I'm actually going to direct you to an ask from a shrimp anon, where we had a little chat about hypersexuality and how to know if your sex drive is too high. (spoiler alert: if you're not actively ruining your own life in the pursuit of sex, it's probably not!)

there are definitely the most stereotypes about cis teenage boys being horny, but it's very normal for people with any gender identity, genitalia, and hormones to be extremely interested in sex during their teen years. (and of course, it's also normal not to be interested at all!) this is the part of your life where everybody's bodies are reaching sexual maturity, and it's extremely EXTREMELY normal to have a burning curiosity to go along with that.

it's also very normal to have a lot of Large emotions and feel like they can switch on a dime; that's the power of Hormones, babey! you're experiencing a lot of internal hormonal situations and external social stresses for the first time, and your brain is learning how to process all that.

I have a friend who's only a few months old, so when he gets overwhelmed he doesn't know how to handle that and usually just cries about it because he's brand new and doesn't have any other coping mechanisms. of course, you have a lot more experience than a guy who's brand new and you know way more coping mechanisms than he does, but you're in a somewhat similar position of having to handle a LOT of new shit and not knowing how to cope with it yet. sometimes what's going to happen is just pivoting hard from one big feeling to another - in some cases, from the pits of despair straight to horny jail.

is it possible to become overly reliant on sexual stimulation as a form of self-soothing? sure, of course. it's possible to become overly reliant on anything; absolutely any positive behavior can become detrimental if it's performed to extremity. again, read that ask I linked!

but pivoting from a breakdown to jacking off isn't a bad idea. it can help you calm down, can be a great transition into a nap or sleep, and pops off a little burst of dopamine and oxytocin that's probably very badly needed if you're on the verge of a breakdown. of course it's ideal to have other healthy outlets for when you're feeling bad - making art or doing something else with your hands, doing some enjoyable physical activity, talking with friends or family, keeping a journal - but as one part of a larger diet of support and coping mechanism, horny behavior is great, normal, and very healthy.

[daflangstlairde-art]

> Masterpost

Hello, I'm DaFlangstLairde, you can also call me V, [they/any]. I'm coming to Tumblr mainly to post fanart, fanfiction, fan edits and general content for whatever my current special interest is. Not everything is linked here, mainly my fanfics. Feel free to send asks or message me to chat! <3

General art tag: #daflangstlairdeart

General fic tag: #daflangstlairdefanfic

Whumtober 2024 tag: #dfl's whumptober 2024

—

> Undertale Content:

+ "she's broken but she's fun" — Killermare/Nightkiller (AU), words: 6,432

Part 1 of ocean depths

Summary:

It's you. You are the nothing. You need him. You need him because he completes you. Of course he's all your messed up brain can latch onto — he's the most potent thing you've encountered, so in a way, it’s like he’s the only real thing. He's the only solid, clear thing, and you need something to grasp and hold onto. You couldn't grow numb to him even if you wanted to. Nightmare says “Kill.” and you kill. — Killer has issues — he can't really feel emotions. Nightmare finds him and takes advantage of that to recruit him. (Or: Killer and Nightmare waltz along the line between what's abuse and what isn't)

+ "she ain't worth a goddamn in anyone else's hands" — Killermare/Nightkiller (AU), words: 5,334

Part 2 of ocean depths

Work Summary:

Nightmare was all, all Killer had. He defined Killer’s entire world. He was the most important thing to Killer. But, just as well, at the end of the day — even if in a very different way — Killer was all Nightmare had. — Being left in the Antivoid is just as much of a torture as you’d imagine. Real torture.

+ "Extremophile" — Killermare/Nightkiller (AU), chapters: 4/4, words: 16,802

Part 3 of ocean depths

Work Summary:

You drown every minute, every second, with every breath you take. You haven’t breathed for so, so long. The icy waters are inside you, deep, deep inside you. All you could ever feel is cold and colder. You haven’t seen the sun in... so... long. It was so far away from you that you couldn’t even picture it anymore. And here was the sun himself. Here was that gasp of air that burned. You’ve been so cold for so long, the warmth feels like death. — Alt summary: It's not easy but boy do I drag Killer (and everyone around him) kicking and screaming towards a healing arc

+ "A Noble Occupation" — Dream-centric (AU), chapters: 2/2, words: 14,160

Summary:

The shame burned. Dream felt as though everyone knew. Knew that he was a failure, that he needed something additional to work (and he was already worse at his work than he'd like). Knew that he wasn't the beacon of happiness and hope that they believed in, that they needed, that they loved. That he was something flawed, which felt sorrow and exhaustion and shame. — Dream acquires a new coping mechanism. It's not a very good one.

> Rise of the TMNT Content:

+ DaFlangstLairde's Whumptober 2024 Masterpost

+ "I Still Feel Alive" Leo-centric series — Masterpost

Series Summary:

Leo's stay in the Prison Dimension was not only longer, but a lot more painful, with only the company of a violent alien and the ghost of his future self. Miraculously, however, he survived, and his family got him out in the end. But then he—and the ghost—find they have to actually face and process the hardships they've endured. Along the way, they have to learn how to hold onto hope; how trauma most often affects you after the fact; how to be vulnerable and connect with your loved ones; what real strength is; and how to move on and live, amongst other things. Feat. a lot of bad jokes.

Tag for the series: #dfl rottmnt isfa

+ "Electrocardiogram" — Disaster Twins oneshot, words: 1,865

Summary:

For a second Donnie thinks he wants Leo's heartbeat to just fucking stop already so the beeping ceased, and the speed with which he shakes that intrusive thought out of his head is rivaled only by Splinter when pizza is the prize. He doesn't mean that, and he knows that he doesn't mean that. He was just- already on edge, he'd felt off for about several hours now, and the irritant that is the beeping is… well, irritating him. - Donnie gets a bit overstimulated and becomes snappy, but it's all out of care for his injured brother. Before anybody gets truly hurt, they handle it in a mature and healthy way as much as they can.

— DaFlangstLairde <3

[compassionatereminders]

Hi! I wanted to answer the anon who was asking about what ADHD meds do & don’t help with as someone who was late-diagnosed and started meds this year. However, the effect of ADHD meds and even experience of ADHD itself varies heavily from person to person, so do keep that in mind!

DO:

- Actually hearing and retaining what people are saying. I was never able to fully experience a college lecture without panic because of only hearing bits and bobs of the lecture, going in one ear and out the other. I can truly focus and actually respond to what people are saying in a single line of thought without desperately trying to stimulate myself as much as possible to maybe get 1/2 of the detail to stick in my brain.

- Time blindness!! At first starting meds it felt like the day went for 500 years. I felt so much slower and mentally calmer, and I was able to complete “simple” tasks in under 15-20 minutes that could normally take me up to 3 hours due to distractions.

- Memory! Off my meds I have an enormously hard time remembering anything I’m trying to accomplish. I bounce from task to task without ever finishing it. On meds I’m able to think “I need to do laundry” and I just. Do the fucking laundry. It’s magical and I’ve cried more than once thinking about how much I’ve spent my life thinking I’m stupid or lazy for not being able to “just do the thing” like everyone else.

- Shutting down/fearful procrastination— I would be stuck doing nothing for days and days because I would want to do a task so badly but overly think about it and essentially paralyze myself in the decision making/getting started process. When I’m on my meds I can just do the fucking thing! Even if I don’t really feel like it! When before I practically had to have the exact perfect circumstance and could never create them, I can just plop myself somewhere and do the fucking thing. Just like I’ve been told all my life— “Even if you don’t want to, do it anyways” except now I have the actual ability to do that like everyone else. Before it was like everyone else was telling me to turn on a light, but I had no switch.

DON’T:

- Help with hyperfixation. Sometimes I can fixate even worse when I’m on my meds, just because my mind is so single stream that I’m able to do things for even more excessive periods. I burn myself out accidentally a lot quicker if I don’t provide myself with manual distractions to take breaks from daily/academic tasks.

- Immediately fix you. It was hard to start meds because I had to unlearn a lot of habits I had developed to cope with my undiagnosed ADHD— such as constantly moving, stimulating myself, having candy, etc. Just because the day became longer didn’t mean my time management became awesome either. I’m still working on tools that help ADHD with my meds!

- Not really a don’t but more so an unexpected side effect was becoming very intensely angry or upset when the medicine wears off. I struggle with emotional dysfunction already but the anger was so severe and I didn’t know that ADHD meds wearing off can cause that.

- Work 100% all of the time. Some days things like stress, poor sleep, poor diet, etc, can alter the way the same dose of meds works for you. Especially if you are nicotine dependent or a regular caffeine consumer, the way your meds work can change on a day by day basis. Some days I feel like the meds aren’t working at all, but more often than not there’s still a difference between myself being unmedicated and medicated.

- Instantly make you better at studying/task completion. Apparently having ADHD for years made me so extremely avoidant of many things that I just don’t have the skill set to do them well yet. Like studying, for example. I still struggle with extreme perfectionism that impedes me outside of ADHD paralysis.

- I’m gonna say it twice but they DONT FIX YOU ON THEIR OWN. Yes, they make your life fucking way better than before especially if you’re an adult with undiagnosed ADHD, but you have to learn how to use tools and learn skills to support yourself for the medication to help you to the max capability! I will definitely say that being on meds helped overhaul my mindset when I’m off meds and improved my perception of myself, but again, the meds can only get me so far!

I hope this helped anon!!!

Thank you for taking the time to share this! I hope anon sees it 💕

[littlest-bugz]

Relapsing is a part of healing

[one systems perspective on relapsing during Resolution/late stage DID recovery.]

This post has been cooking in my drafts for a while, but since I'm back in a headspace where I would consider myself back in Resolution, I'm comfortable talking about this. I'm airing out my dirty laundry quite a bit in this post, but the reason I'm making this post is because of the fact I don't see many late stage recovery systems talk about relapsing back into dissociation and other CDD symptoms. I'm here to say it's totally okay and a part of healing. I don't know who needs to hear that, but I definitely did. I didn't hear it until i was in therapy.

A couple of months ago [when I was initially writing this post], I went through a series of traumatic events, including little over 3 weeks of reoccurring flashbacks due to a re-traumatizing situation. I have lovingly dubbed it 'the three weeks of hell'. There was more than just that, including 2 explosive breakdowns, where I just couldn't handle all the input I was getting with what all was going on. I was a whole wreck for a moment there, that's for sure. THANKFULLY, we only split off a one new alter after everything, which is healing progress, but it meant an increase in blackout amnesia in our day to day life, let alone the dissociation it was causing the system as a whole, nearly putting us back at step one of recovery.

The moment I noticed the blackout amnesia and increase in DID symptoms, I started thinking I had ruined any progress I could've possibly made. It felt like I had taken ten steps forward and then tumbled down the stairs. I never got to process the trauma as it just began to pile on, and eventually I popped in probably the worst explosive breakdown I've EVER had- my fight or flight kicked in and for gods know what reason, my brain chose fight. But that breakdown had solidified that 'fuck, I'm getting worse again' mentality I had going on. Everyone I knew seemed to 'keep it together' during rough times, so why couldn't I?

So that brought me to this post.

I wondered why I don't see talk of relapse in Late Stage Recovery spaces, let alone general CDD spaces. I figure, in my mind, that it's because it just isn't talked about. At least, not frequently. In the space I have curated for myself, I see a lot of fellow late stage recovery systems and finally fused systems, but everyone seems to not have relapsed at any point. Granted, this is the internet, and people show what they want others to see, but I felt ashamed for a good while that I had relapsed back into the amnesiac aspects of my dissociation. I didn't feel like I could call the stage of healing I am in 'late stage recovery'. But that's just. not true. I still am. My healing is ongoing, and I was able to resolve it.

In recovery for many disorders, relapses are, inherently, a part of the process of healing. Symptoms resurfacing is, to some extent, part of healing. Everyone is bound to have slip ups and rough times, and if your go to coping mechanism is dissociation [in CDDs cases], it's possible that you might slip back into those maladaptive mechanisms due to the stress of life happenings, but that's okay. What is needed is to learn the proper coping skills to deal with that stress, but it can be extremely hard to unlearn maladaptive coping skills and make turning towards healthy ones a default. Relapsing gives you the time to reinforce and build up what skills you do have.

When the three weeks of hell was occurring, I didn't exactly have the coping skills necessary to keep on with life, and any I did have, they were not 'automatic' enough. On top of that, my therapist was conveniently out of office for those three weeks. It did give me the time to make my skills stronger. Of course, I felt terrible about it but Relapsing is okay. As long as you learn how to deal with the stress and trauma, that's what matters. I'm still learning how to properly cope with everything that happened during those weeks, to be blunt, but I have gained a grasp on Resolution pretty quickly afterwards. I don't think it would've been possible to recover so easily had I not been in late stage recovery, and like I said before, it helped reinforce my coping skill box, making them stronger and much easier to recall. I definitely would say that relapsing was a part of my healing. Didn't feel good, but it became a huge factor in how we cope day to day.

TLDR; Relapsing during Resolution [Functional Multiplicity/Final fusion] is a part of recovery itself.

[risingsouls]

So Momo, you mentioned before that Vegeta has complicated feelings about his race. What are they of exactly? Does he mourn the Saiyans being gone? Does he not care? Does he miss the role he was supposed to fulfill as prince, and eventually king? Are there other, obscure factors at play? Do tell, if you want to 👀

[Bless u Nebula for giving me a platform to discuss why I think Vegeta is more complex than we usually get to see.

This got long, so under the cut lmao

To start with the topic at hand, ideas of celebrating the Saiyans makes him itchy because it brings up all his repressed, complicated feelings about his race, most potently just the fact that they're dead. Thus, celebrating something like Saiyan day sounds really stupid to him. But I will try to delve into the depths of those feelings here and address your questions. And maybe some other thing if my mush brain can manage it.

Even though Vegeta has made callous comments about his races demise, up to and including basically suggesting they "deserved it" because they were to weak to stop it, this is all just posturing on his part. An attempt to act strong and unaffected in front of others, especially Nappa and Raditz who he was the sole monarch to after their planet was destroyed. It was also a way for him to cope that was easier for him since that was basically the Saiyan mentality: the strong survive, the weak don't. He just...tries not to think about the fact that the three of them were simply lucky to have been off planet. That they would be space dust with the rest of them if not for that simple fact. Most people, including Nappa and later Raditz, likely see through this, but they don't really dare to correct him. These days, he doesn't say these kinds of things; he's not trying to fool himself anymore, in other words.

That said, he does still mourn the loss of the Saiyans and his home. In truth, this is the first time in his life he's had the chance to, and parsing through it all has been an ongoing process. He won't admit to it or do it openly because of how he was raised, and might even suggest that he doesn't care anymore, but he definitely does mourn them.

As for missing his role as prince/king...I'm not sure if that's the way to word it exactly. In a sense, he didn't really want to be king because the role meant he would be stuck planetside more often than he would like. However, ruling the Saiyans was still his birthright, and it was one he wanted to SOME degree in that sense. It is still complicated though because, on one hand, he does feel he was denied that birthright and all that came with it. But at the same time, it's hard for him to care with the entire race he was meant to rule is dead + depression. So basically, he didn't necessarily want to rule, but that was still supposed to be HIS right.

Additionally, Vegeta feels he failed his people. He failed to save them, even if he was a kid. He failed Nappa and Raditz, the last two Saiyans he knew of before meeting Goku, even if that was partially his own fault for his callous behavior arguably learned from Frieza to certain degrees (I need to write about this again akdfjkladf). He basically feels like a failure who doesn't deserve his title as prince and, on the worst days, doesn't feel he deserves to call himself a Saiyan at all because he's sure his ancestors would be disappointed in him, what happened, and who he became.

The irony in all this is that, even if he were presented with the ability to revive them...it wouldn't be an easy yes for him (as seen in a thread I had long ago with @earthforsaken :'3). On the one hand, it's been so long. The nihilist in him thinks it would be pointless. He sees nothing good coming from reviving them and their planet. It's also about that last point of feeling like a failure. That he wouldn't live up the the high expectations the Saiyans had for him, especially since he had been beaten by Goku, a Saiyan of a lower class. He carries a lot of shame in himself, and he's certain he would see that reflected in his dead race's eyes. He isn't sure he could face that after decades of beating HIMSELF up over it all.

Overall, he is proud of his race. He's proud to call himself a Saiyan for the most part on most days. But between mourning them finally and his own perception of himself in regards to their demise and the like, things become a lot less rosy. He's working on it, on feeling that pride without the baggage attached, but it's not easy for him to do.]

[viscerawrites]

status update 9/28/2024

just a lil post to announce what fics ive worked on/tasks ive crossed off my checklist today! its mostly for myself rlly fcngnhkk buuut its here if anyone's curious ig? Im just chilling

---

what ive accomplished today:

wrote 492 words for chapter 2 of where love didn't exist

today was the first time ive been able to work on this fic (w/o anxiety) since i first posted it in january, so that's pretty nice! tbh i lost so much confidence in it after i lost my therapist since i was hoping to use it as a coping fic while i processed shit. but who knows, maybe it'll still help me learn things abt myself. regardless, im excited to be back at it!

wrote 156 words for my sleep token oneshot wip, the body as a temple ; got it to 913!

i havent worked on this one in a while either lol, mostly bc i started it right before The Anxiety started hitting me every time i sat down to write. i was honestly rlly nervous to return to it cuz i was scared I wouldn't be able to keep writing it at all. but im giving myself the grace to move slow, so. rare W for me.

retyped/sorta edited 582 words for chapter 1 of my hollywood undead wip the exorcism of jorel decker

i actually posted this 1st chapter a long while ago! then i deleted it, tried to rework into original fiction, realized i was having much more fun writing it as bandfic, and then foolishly orphaned the original version instead of just deleting </3 but the good news abt that is. idk if i still have it in my google docs at all. so at least i have that to reference LOL.

---

soo.

today is saturday september 28 (this month is going by way too fast fr) and it's just past 6pm rn. got a late start today bc i was exhausted as shit for a while, then i talked to my mom incessantly for what was apparently hours. So i only got started around 3pm (but i still needed to warm up, soo it took longer. Bleh).

didn't set my checklist goals at the start of the day like i planned to bc i was having The Anxiety and a bit of decision paralysis. and was also worried abt.. Various things. so it doesn't feel as successful today, but ive still gotten shit done and that's what should matter to me.

out of everything ive typed today, ive done abt 1,230 words in total so far. Most of that was unfortunately just me retyping shit ive already written and am now moving from google docs to ellipsus (which i highly recommend btw). i typically prefer to retype into new software instead of pasting; it gets the brain flowing better.

but i did still write some new words, and a lot of what i retyped was modified and added to. or cut. Whatever it needed rlly.

im still trying to find the proper schedule for myself + the best way to juggle my millions of projects/ideas. I need to allow myself some wiggle room while still having some structure. adhd is making this a bit difficult (as it so often does), but it's rlly just trial and error rn. Plus a lot of self-acceptance and focusing on making things easier and more fun for myself - instead of worrying abt the "most reasonable" way to do things. Or anything others might recommend.

I do still plan on writing some more before the night is done, so I might be back w/ an update for this before I head to bed. I got distracted by my brother while writing this post so it's now just after 6:45 LOL.

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gonna close this post off w/ music ive been rlly liking today! bc,, why not.

Animals - Ice Nine Kills (maroon 5 cover)

Disturbia - The Cab (rihanna cover)

What I Never Learned In Study Hall - Ice Nine Kills

[milfygerard]

Not to tell you how to run your own blog but I loved the discussions full of nuance and would love to see them more often. But also on the other hand I know people who did that often enough that they ended up a target of hate too. Apologies for sending the super chaotic album analysis ask, I was running on fumes too, it was 5am and I hadn't gone to bed yet. The winter months come and I always have trouble waking up before the sun sets, and falling asleep before the sunrise.

Anyway I am not diagnosed with anything, never really could be with where I am, even more so as a woman (we don't even have ADHD meds, those with a diagnosis travel abroad just to buy them) but I have an inkling I might be ND because of many factors but mainly due to feeling like I'm an alien my entire life which no one seems to understand. I've thought about going abroad to get a diagnosis and then I read about what they were doing to ND people during covid and I went fuck that I'll stay wondering and alive. As for Taylor I think the biggest pointer for me was seeing her directing Me! and saying she needs to do less "dead face" or whatever she called it when looking at the footage. I went, oh I know that, it's the thing I also tell myself to do when surrounded by people. Later on I learned why that might be a thing I do lmaooo

the absolute dread i felt getting this anon notif like oh no...it begins

I appreciate the very valid concerns, ive seen how swifties can react to and treat blogs that post too much about subjects they don't like or see as valid. I also have mutuals ive seen get on the wrong end of swiftie harassment and it definitely seems overwhelming at the very least. I have a bit of luck/disguise on my end because ive kind of deduced that swifties seem to not care too much about me if they arent mutuals bc i am not technically a swiftie blog. She's definitely the special interest ive been talking about the most, but I don't post about her solely, I don't have her as my icon or in my url (girard <3) or mentioned anywhere that i'm a swift enjoyer except for me tagging her posts for mutuals who don't wanna see it. My actual posts that I write about her rarely get a Ton of notes and i make them pretty sparsely while also talking about and reblogging a ton of other random shit. I think this helps lessen the likeliness that I'll get someone who like...obsessively reads my blog to point out how stupid dumb and stupid my takes are and get attached to me in like a lolcow sense of trying to provoke me into arguing or entertaining them. If i do start getting some of that, I'll probably just turn off anon and asks for awhile and eventually theyll forget I exist or maybe even block me, imagine that <3

For the second part, I do encourage you to look into whatever neurodivergencies you think you may have even if a literal doctors diagnosis isnt a possibility! Part of the reason im pretty comfortable with tossing around words like autism is because I don't see professional diagnosis as a be all end all, nor do I think its bad to give yourself a "wrong" diagnosis while trying to understand yourself. Even if you don't end up identifying with autistm, I think being around autistic circles and learning about coping mechanisms and thought processes for other neurodivergencies can be so helpful for understanding yourself and your brain, and can bring really helpful. Like, I don't personally have DID or severe psychosis but talking to and reading write ups from mutuals has let me learn about them as like mundane mental health issues/NDs that anyone could have as well as issues i have had in the past with mild hallucinations or conceptions of personality. Most mental illnesses and NDs are treated very strangely and cruelly in general society and are considered aberrant or inherently bad or painful, but these are normal and often neutral (or positive! Which is often ignored or not considered) aspects of peoples lives.

If you are curious about self diagnosis, the most reliable and popular test online is the RAADS-R questionnaire which theres a great version of on embrace autism which i also definitely recommend scrolling through. They also have interesting articles, alternate tests and articles and tests for other neurodivergencies like OCD, which really opened my eyes to the likeliness that I've been suffering with undiagnosed OCD for pretty much my entire life. Theres also an autism forum if you want a broader spread of information and advice that might not be immediately accessible to you. I didnt touch on taylor much in this response (the dead face thing is extremely real, that and her talking about deciding to make the blood in anti hero purple glitter glue because she doesnt feel like a real normal human being in that directors on directors interview) but I do hope the other stuff is helpful and not too rambly <3 autism forever

[honeysuckle-venom]

@queerfirewatchers asked a lot of great questions about our journey towards fusion the other day, I'm going to make them into a post here! It's very long, so it's going below the cut

Does your therapist specialize in dissociative disorders? If not, do you feel like that was a vice in terms of recovery?

My therapist does not specialize in dissociative disorders, but she does specialize in trauma, and had a decent amount of experience with dissociative disorders before me. She also has a lot of experience/arguably specialization in psychotic disorders and trauma based psychosis, which has been hugely important for me. I do not at all feel like her not being a CDD specialist was a negative thing; in fact, for me personally it probably would've been a worse experience to work with a CDD specialist because of my particular comorbidities. It was definitely important that she had previous experience with DID, and it would've been a problem if I had felt like I was the one educating her, but thankfully that was not the case. The other reason it wasn't a problem for me in terms of recovery is that our journey towards fusion is 100% a trauma recovery journey. Very very little of the work we've done, especially in the last few years, has been explicitly about DID. We rarely talk about alters, and despite have therapy 2-3 times per week for over 9 years I know that my therapist could not name all of my alters, because that makes up very little of what we talk about. For me healing from DID has been primarily about a) healing from trauma and b) accepting the parts of myself that I feared/hated/was ashamed of. Those two things are what have lead to fusion for me, not explicit DID recovery/communication/integration work. There was a bit more of that type of work earlier on, but the last few years? Very very little. But of course my process is not going to be the same as anyone else's, and there are some people who do need a DID specialist. We just weren't one of them.

2. How did you get all your alters on board with it? I'm really struggling with that part because I feel like I can't get the parts who are blocking us to show up in therapy

I'm going to be honest, I don't 100% know how to answer this one. When we first learned about our DID we were terrified of fusion. It sounded like killing some of us off, like destroying some of our chances to be who we wanted to be. And then even when we tried to believe it wasn't really like that, it still sounded awful bc it meant we'd have to be present all the time, no more switching out when triggered or overwhelmed, and why would I ever do that to myself? Why would I get rid of such an effective coping mechanism? I tried to keep an open mind, and certainly was never philosophically against fusion like some people are, but most of us had zero interest in seeking it out for ourselves.

That attitude changed very slowly, largely due to interacting with other people who had fused or were interested in fusion or were at least discussing it without the fearmongering you see all over tumblr. And then, several years ago, my brain did a weird thing. It gave me a week off. For about a week, everyone except me went dormant, but it didn't feel scary or bad. It was essentially like a sneak preview of fusion. I didn't have the kind of access to other parts I have now, but it wasn't quite like normal dormancy either. It was quiet, and peaceful, and felt like how I imagined people who had never had DID felt. I don't know how or why my brain did this, and it didn't last very long. But it felt really good, and gave us the courage to really start to accept fusion as a goal. I know that's not a helpful answer, because I don't know how or why that happened to me and can't make it happen to you. But that's pretty much how we got everyone on board.

I will say something about the second part of your question though, about having trouble getting the parts who aren't on board to show up to therapy. First of all, that sounds very frustrating, and I'm sorry that's been hard. You probably know all of the normal advice here (try to find out why they don't want therapy, do they not like your therapist, are they afraid of integration, do they think they need to keep secrets for abusers and/or from other parts, etc etc etc). If it's important for them to go to therapy, obviously you should try to work on that, and if there are issues that are stopping it from happening you should address them. But. I will say that at least for us, it was not necessary for every part to go to therapy, and many of us have never been. Even some of our most "difficult" parts never attended therapy. Instead, I talked about them in therapy, and my therapist was usually the one encouraging me to have more empathy for those parts. That was more important in the end for us than some of those parts attending themselves. Additionally, fusion really won't happen if you're not all on board, and that's okay. One of the things you definitely don't want to do is push it. For us fusion was a very very slow and natural process that came along with healing and lowering dissociative barriers. By the time we got to the point when it would be possible, we had been working as a team for long enough that some parts not being on board was not an issue. We had to work very very hard at understanding and accepting each other, that was the most important thing, including understanding things we fundamentally disagreed on, and trying to work those disagreements out and compromise. We had an easier time with this than many systems do, but it still took a lot of effort. But once we had done that, everyone was kind of naturally on board and working together and fusion just started happening because we were finally ready. My advice is not to push towards fusion, it's to push towards healing and acceptance of each other, at which point fusion might be something that happens, or it might not. And having all parts attend therapy is not necessary for that and may in fact be counterproductive at the moment if you're forcing them to do something they don't want to do. I would recommend trying to understand what's holding them back from healing instead of trying to force them to heal in ways they aren't ready for.

3. I understand that part of healing is integrating and sharing memories and cooperating, but idk how to do that when so many of the memories are like…. paralyzing with how petrifying they are to have happened to Me Collectively instead of Me an Alter. how did you deal with fear, assuming you had something similar?

I've definitely dealt with this, and it was by far the hardest part of the whole thing. And also the most important part, unfortunately. A huge, huge part of integrating has been not just surface-level-acknowledging but truly processing that I actively experienced some honestly horrific things. In some ways I was kind of forced to push through that fear, because I was getting flashbacks/having things come up no matter what, so I had to talk about them. And I didn't force it overly when things weren't coming up naturally. I tend to trust my brain/subconscious to know when it's time to do trauma processing. But it was still extremely difficult when it was time to face processing and integrating those memories and experiences and grieving their effects. And I had to do it in layers. I would process an aspect of my trauma history, and be horrified, and feel sick, and grieve, and talk about it, and I would think I was done. But actually I was only processing to the extent I was capable of at the time. And then a year later I'd kind of reach a new level with my recovery and the same memories would hit me differently and I'd have to do the whole thing over again. And each time it was pretty horrible. I don't really have anything that makes the process better. What I can say is that it's fucking worth it. I was always told "it gets better" and "recovery is possible" but tbh I didn't truly believe it. I hung onto it as a mantra, because I needed that hope, but I couldn't internalize the concept until I started to experience it myself. Part of why it was so hard for me to accept is because I hadn't really met anyone who'd done it. All of my friends were also deeply mentally ill, and I was further along in therapy than pretty much all of them. The only source I had was my own therapist, I didn't know details but I knew she'd recovered from some Serious Stuff TM. But because I didn't know details it still wasn't that helpful of an example. But I'm experiencing it now, and I can finally say for sure that it's real. That not only is fusion real, but trauma recovery is real. Those same memories, that I had to process over and over in a deeply scary and painful way in therapy? That tortured me for years? Aren't as powerful anymore. They're getting less powerful every day. My PTSD symptoms are improving, and I never thought that would happen. I thought that even if we fused I'd still be tormented by my past experiences. And while that's still true to a certain extent, for the first time in my life the impact of my trauma is lessening. I had to accept that those things happened to me, and it was awful. But having accepted that and worked to heal from it, it's so much less painful than it was before going through that process. It's a hard process, and it feels endless at times, but it truly is possible to come out the other side in a way that I once thought was a myth.

4. did you ever run into the problem of not knowing if a feeling was coming from your ocd or an alter? cause I've been dealing with that a lot and idk how to tell the difference or how to proceed bc I'm scared of irreparably causing damage by doing it "wrong" if that makes any sense

This is a tricky one. While I have not had the problem of not knowing if a feeling was coming specifically from my OCD or an alter, I have definitely had the feeling of not knowing if something was coming from my psychosis or an alter, which is different but not entirely dissimilar. In those cases though the treatment for both for me is quite similar, so it's not necessarily a helpful example when it comes to this question. I would need a few more details to know what your concerns are here/why you're so worried about this? But even if the things you would do to help with OCD are very different from how you would try to help an alter, I highly doubt that you need to be quite so worried about doing it "wrong," and I think even if you do the chances of the damage being irreparable is so slim as to be almost nonexistent. If it's possible to recover from the kind of damage that causes DID (and it is) then it's possible to recover from some mistakes during treatment. In fact, it's pretty much inevitable that you and/or your therapist will make at least a few mistakes along the way, and learning that it's possible to do that and to repair those mistakes is honestly an important part of the process. So while I would need more specifics to understand what the exact concerns are here/how I might respond to them, I will say that in general I don't think you need to be so afraid of attempting to heal something one way, realizing it's not working, and then trying something different.

Thank you so so much for all of these amazing questions, I really enjoyed answering them and I hope my answers can give some insight to people wondering about fusion! I'm happy to receive more questions from anyone who wants to send them :)

[tanmitasu]

お久しぶりです。。。

Well I am supposed to be updating this blog, first of all, let me get out of the New Year greetings with this: 明けましておめでとうございます！

I apologize if I did not update it as much as I could, I wanted to talk about realization and truth of learning. First of all, I am a slacker in my own thoughts, I have desired to try physical classes since I feel that I am stuck doing so much self-learning 🥺, so I was toying with which classes would suit me (I actually took an actual class many years back before I enter university and this said teacher killed my motivation), so I decided to bite the bullet here and try this school because I was hoping to go for their weekday day classes (The cool thing is that the building feels like a James Bond film), so before Christmas weekend- I decide to go for a placement test to see where am I.

Sooo I, being overly confident be like yeah all my Japanese customers and associates said I can speak Japanese well (Do not be deceived by the comment 上手です) and I got this, which I got humbled pretty quick. Like really, which I have to nurse my ego that I am yes, I am willing and the tester be like uhm girl- you need to go basic which I am like yeah, and we decide to try you on that trial class before Christmas, and man it was a humbling experience because the changes are sudden and here am I, wanting to make friends and perhaps partnered with the worse person to bounce off in your speech (Well I do not have friends, so, unfortunately, I was partnered with that lady who could barely speak English with me), and I was nearly in tears, with me being unable to cope with the pacing that I was doubting myself if I could do, because some are so good and I, who self-taught myself for 3 years plus- become awkward and actually struggle.

So yes I was humbled again-big time, so I found myself alone and if not a little upset about my progress- then I decided to chat with an online friend, and she shared about how lonely her experience in learning Japanese and understood the struggle, and that moment I recall a panel in Haikyuu which Akaashi got over his head during one volleyball match and saying how jealous they are seeing the game- which I could relate- I feel like an anxious mess. However I decide to look at Kita's backstory and this came to me, which I am like Kita holding his captain jersey in my head going "Does this count on the result side of things?" , like I began to question myself- and this made me realize that I am so focused on the results that I forget to work on the present.

So cue me last Saturday, entering my first class- this time chatting with a friend to share my anxiety and I told myself about that experience which an epiphany came to me, that I held myself with high standards that it sucked the joy of me actually learning, which I can say that my 先生 be like are you alright, as she caught me packing my bag slowly after class, and I was like I struggle with particles in the Japanese language, that she took the time to write down the particles which I show her the document which I work. And what she said to me, is to slow down which I did not realize that I was simply hurrying because of my anxiety to be the best, which I could be myself (This is something which I am trying to undo but it is too ingrained in my brain), to just have fun. I am so concerned about the process that I forget to be in the present, just like Kita himself, to enjoy what I am doing. (She sorta reminds me of Takeda-sensei, the head teacher for the Karasuno team, and I am like Hinata per say).

But yeah, I am still a work in progress, letting go of the people-pleasing aspect and just being myself- I even got a better partner to bounce off of my conversation, though he is struggling as much as I am (minus the awkwardness).

Here is to new things to come and hopefully, I can be truly myself

[multiplicity-positivity]

hi! allow me give you some context first before we ask our question.

two of our headmates were dating for what i know is a few months and we’re very happy together. we love that for them! but , recently one of them had gone dormant , which made the other of the pair act more anxious, irritable, and on edge.

my question is - what are some ways to help deal/cope with someone close to you (regardless if they are romantically involved, queer platonic, familial, platonic, etc) having had gone into dormancy?

thank you for your time!

— rui

Hi there! We’re so sorry that your system is going through something like this - grappling with the loss of a headmate to dormancy can be difficult and upsetting. We wish y’all peace and rest in this challenging time!

One thing that’s important to remember is dormant headmates are not dead and they most certainly are not gone forever! Sometimes the brain just decides when a headmate is needed and when they aren’t, and acts accordingly without any say from other system members. Experiencing something like this can be scary and stressful, but we have some tips that may help y’all come to terms with your headmate’s dormancy!

1) Allow yourself and your system time to mourn and grieve.

It’s true, dormant headmates aren’t dead, but sometimes it can feel like they are! Remind yourself and your system that it’s okay to sit with your negative feelings. Allow yourself to miss your dormant headmate, to reminisce on the good times y’all shared, express yourselves through art, or cry if you need to! It’s sad to lose a headmate to dormancy, and denying yourself or your system the right to acknowledge that can be hurtful. It’s also a process that shouldn’t be rushed! So don’t be too hard on yourself or your system if y’all are still missing this headmate long after they first went dormant.

2) Talk about your feelings

Be open with your other headmates about how the loss of one of your system members is affecting you. If anyone you know outside the system is aware of your plurality, maybe share your situation with them and discuss this headmate and how their dormancy makes you feel. Support is crucial when grieving, and the same is true for those mourning a headmate even temporarily lost to dormancy! If you’re in therapy, this would be an excellent topic to bring up during your next session.

3) Keep their memory close

If the dormant headmate left any loose ends, maybe try to finish up their unfinished business (if it’s something you can do confidently and to their standards!). Whether that means taking on a chore they used to do, maintaining a relationship that was exclusively theirs, continuing a project they had been working on before they went dormant, or something else! Perhaps make a playlist of their favorite music, spend some time watching their favorite movies or shows, prepare their favorite foods, and do other things that help keep their memory alive in your system.

4) Be ready for their return

It may take weeks, months, or years for your headmate to come out of dormancy. We’ve had a headmate who was dormant for over a decade! Understand though, that if and when they do re-emerge, they will likely be disoriented and confused. You can check out our post on helping headmates post-dormancy to learn how to prepare your system to be as helpful to your headmate as possible when they do come back.

5) Show yourself and your system kindness, patience, and self-compassion

Losing touch with a very close loved one can lead to anxiety, depression, confusion, lethargy, and other negative experiences/feelings. Your headmates may find that it’s harder to stay focused, communicate effectively, or complete tasks that they used to do with no problem. It’s important to be understanding of your situation, for yourself and for the other members of your system. Set new, more realistic expectations for your system - don’t expect your headmates to be able to keep up with everything that they could before the dormancy. Take things slow, check in with your system regularly (especially the one who lost a partner), and make sure to keep up communication with everyone to the best of your ability. This way, y’all can communicate your needs to each other, and keep from exhausting yourself or getting burnt out while also grappling with the loss of a system member!

We hope some of these tips can help y’all effectively manage life with one less member in your system. Again, we’re so sorry your system is going through this! We wish y’all peace and joy in your future, and hope you can find happiness even without your dormant headmate’s presence.

🌸 Margo and 🐢 Kip

[kafus]

how do each of them self soothe, what would constitute a good day for them, what's something that makes them irrationally angry

i didn't see this because i was asleep!! AAA i'm on my computer now and can answer TY FOR ASKING AGAIN i love an excuse to talk about my girls

how do each of them self soothe

so kaf is autistic in my AU and this somewhat informs her self soothing choices. she's very much a "needs a quiet and alone activity" sort of person when she's had a long day at work, with or without quiet music depending on the mood. knitting and reading are both active hobbies for her (she's into fantasy and typical YA type stuff but she actively dislikes romance in books most of the time so it can take her some time to find stuff she likes with tolerable amounts of romantic themes lol) and she also has a habit of taking really long baths because they relax her adsfksafd

as for kafu she doesn't really have the same emotional regulation problems as people do. not that she doesn't experience distress because she does (and later on in their lives she develops even more complex stress cycles and responses. perhaps unfortunately LOL in which case her coping might mirror a human a little more) but her stress isn't something that, for lack of better words rn i'm tired, "sits in her body." she doesn't really need to decompress in the typical sense because her body does not get worked up with her brain and once her stress is "solved" it doesn't really linger. the best thing kafu can do when she's in distress is to talk it out. (sometimes if she's struggling to process things, she can resemble a person going into a dissociative trance, but that's just because all of her literal processing power is being funneled to her metaphorical brain and she isn't using it for her body movements lol)

and just because there's a cute story to go along with this, as for acute stressors, like coping with something short-term in the moment, both of them will rhythmically tap their knee or drum their fingers on a surface. kaf just does this naturally as a stress response and kafu was confused by why she did it, and after kaf explained she started mirroring the behavior. it's not that it's intrinsically soothing for her, but it reminds her of kaf and she associates it with calm because of her... so it ends up letting her clear her head anyhow.

2. what would constitute a good day for them

ohh good question. kaf likes to feel like she gets something done everyday, she hates feeling like she's just sitting around and she hates taking days off from work. as much as she needs her alone time, it's also frustrating for her when she's late to finishing something she planned, or isn't ambitious with her job. i think a good day for her would be one where she gets stuff done at work, but not to the point where it's totally exhausting so she can chill out at home without Coping being part of the equation

as for kafu she's extremely curious about people and the world and if she learns something new, that's a good day for her. even later in the story where androids are a normal part of society and she can participate in society, she's a lot less interested in her own personal ambitions and more into supporting other people and just fulfilling her endless curiosity about everything. the more she knows about her human peers the better!

3. what's something that makes them irrationally angry

kaf doesn't have an angry bone in her body and it would be extremely difficult to push her to the point of irrational anger. she's a lot more likely to turn anything that would be anger at others in on herself. that being said she can uncharacteristically yell or get very angry if anyone were to push her buttons while in an autistic meltdown and there's a whole thing later in life where kafu is judged by her android peers for not wanting to upgrade her body to something more realistic (she keeps the prototype body more or less) and depending on the severity that can really piss her off, too, since that's her girlfriend! oh and admittedly she'd be the type of person to see shitty music opinions on twitter and get really irritated (though never start actually arguing with people, more like start complaining to kafu about some dumb shit on the internet while scrolling her phone on the couch LOL)

i think kafu is actually often confused by anger, including her own. to her it doesn't make sense because all problems should have solutions and if there's a solution, anger doesn't seem like a productive or reasonable response. and she's aware that sometimes emotions don't make sense or are irrational, but since anger is most likely to cause damage to the people around you, i think it makes the least sense to her. but kafu develops very strong morals and cares so much about others and the world, she's very much pissed off with the problems in society and the government and also discrimination. girl is an activist-type even if only in her personal life - she's not capable of crying but she would be the type to cry over the news. i think if kafu witnessed a hate crime irl she would commit violence against the perpetrator on sight

sorry if any of these answers were kinda messy i'm tired and rusty on talking about kafu's brain functions in particular LOL

[hollygl125]

Summer Reading / Writing / Arting Tag

Tagged by: @coping-via-clint-eastwood. (Fun! Thank you!)

1. Describe one creative WIP project you’re planning to work on over the summer.

I’m planning to submit a story for the ficwip 5k AU challenge, but I wrote that two days after it was announced (I have absolutely zero control over my mind), so now I’m just waiting for sign-ups and posting. I consider it a pre-canon divergent, canon convergent modification of a coffee-shop AU (not that I’ve ever read a coffee-shop AU). I think it’s pretty cute. But, since it’s already complete, I won’t exactly be working on that over the summer….

I will still be working on my ongoing series. It was ostensibly finished last August, but it’s grown in length by at least 50% since then (by adding to the middle—the end point is roughly the same). I currently have two unfinished sections (sections where I started adding something but need to fill in the rest).

In a dream world I would make a video to accompany the fic series, but I am an extreme perfectionist and don’t currently have the patience, so I think I would likely just drive myself crazy in the attempt.

I’d love to learn to make gifs in Photoshop, with pretty colours and layers and I don't know what…. I made a gif-set in PS once, but the end result was really big and unusable for most purposes because I didn’t really know what I was doing.

I’d also kind of like to embroider something. I bought some embroidery kits while slightly out of my mind during the height of the pandemic, and I think it would be fun to try using them and then, after learning a bit, make up something on my own. (Would it involve bees and butterflies? Probably.)

2. Rec a book!

Fiction: Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland. I haven’t read this in forever, but I meant to recommend it to someone about a decade ago and never got the chance. So I’m recommending it now to y’all instead.

Non-Fiction: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, which is about the development of racist ideas and non-racist ideas alongside each other. I think this is one of the last books I read before I broke my brain.

3. Rec a fic (outside your character tag)!

How cute of you, question-asker, to think I read any fic outside GSR!

4. Rec music!

I’m terrible at recommending music, but I do have a Spotify playlist for my GSR series. (The Spotify playlist is only current to the stories I’ve posted so far. My private iTunes playlist has about 100 more songs. The Spotify playlist will get there eventually.)

5. Share one piece of advice!

I did my undergrad in History and English Lit, but I have no background in creative writing (aside maybe from previously running my dog’s Instagram account), so I don’t know if I’m in much of a position to give advice, but I’ll tell you how I approached my writing process (and had a lot of fun with it!), and maybe that’ll help someone.

Writing fan fiction was not something I seriously considered doing until the day before I started doing it. On the day before I started, I thought of it as something I might do quite a ways in the future, when I’d prepared more. But then the next day my brain was like, actually, no, we’re doing this now.

The reason I’d decided to write fanfic was that I had all these little romantic GSR scenarios running around my head at night (and in the morning, and in the afternoon, and in the evening…), and it was getting really tiresome having to recreate the dialogue every night.

When I started I did an outline in a Word doc with story or chapter headings, based on the different aspects of the GSR story I knew I wanted to address. After I had the outline, I didn’t fill in the story linearly, though. I first wrote whatever scenario was most pressing to get out of my head. Then I wrote the next thing, then the next, then the next, all based on what was most urgently trying to escape my head. Sometimes I added more headings when I had new ideas.

But it was never work; it was always fun. I probably looked a little goofy. I kept thinking… oh my god, I can’t believe I’m doing this. (You have to keep in mind that, until January 2022, I had not read any fic since (or before) I read fic for Josh and Donna when they were taking their own sweet time back in the mid-2000s.)

Eventually I had to write some sections that were more functional—stuff that was simply necessary to get from Point A to Point B—but that was really minimal and still relatively enjoyable. (I have a hard time even remembering what those sections were anymore, but I think the chapter explaining how they got from the year of honeymoons to the events of season 13 was definitely one of them).

So I guess my advice would be that you should just do whatever works for you. (E.g., you don’t have to start at the beginning.) I think this works well with c-v-c-e’s advice: “This is art. There ARE no rules, especially ones restricting flexibility and expression.”

And, most importantly, please remember to try to have fun!

Tagging: If you would like to participate, please consider yourself tagged!

[crater-lake]

131

6/29/24

I do not want to write, I want to sleep. I am awake because that dude, Hunter, who I once spoke to on Grindr and saw on Tinder, who did not swipe right on me, is beginning a job with Meta as a software something. It rose something out of me. If I have a lot of room for choice, should I have tried to maximize profits to have more time for rest, especially as I cope with a unique Post-Covid exhaustion? I feel envious of a lucrative job because it makes people seem valuable. So I stayed awake and kept being awake.

Today I have a bad headache but I cannot sleep. I exchange nearly bizarre messages with Dan Flaherty about love and the world and I feel sick of it. I just want to be here, at home, and lie down and have a break for a while, I think. I thought that I wanted to be independent and immune but I don't feel dread reintegrating into this version, which means my feelings pre-departure were not as bad as I think.

I had other more profound things to maybe share but the act of writing always distract me. I can feel skepticism say that inhibition is just the lens, and that in good writing, isn't the act additive, after all?

I was watching a YouTube video and now I am listening to music in writing these words out. Process. It is #3 by Aphex Twin, which I could not remember when Ragav was here, so I sent it to him. I am not sure which information is appropriate for whom. Now that I am writing a lot of different facts are occurring to me simultaneously.

A few sentences for Dad, with whom I spoke about family and selflessness and living for something. I think Dad loves us all so much he forgets himself but I think remembering himself hurts too much. I cautioned him to remember while he was drinking from an amber glass. He spoke, as always, about how his family [. ]. I don't have the sentence for it right now, but should I? If it is me reading, after all, then I don't need to. And why must I commit everything to ritual to preserve it- can't it just sometimes happen to happen? Must it be a label to, something essential, just to, not live for a few weeks, but have residency in importance, in the heart of the body, which is not the heart, but the brain. Dad said I am smarter than him, smarter, smarter, but it is actually not true and I learned that during the convo. How can I know I would have survived what he survived? I admit the lenses are all wrong, and that his deep wisdom and my overthinking are the difference between what a lake knows about the ocean. So there is that shore of understanding I have created in language. He explained needing to work for a while. He explained how Mom is not so comforting- which I read in his eyes - how he is warmer. Mom is comforting to me, though. We talked about how Lily is quite reactive to Mom and I am not. And why might that be? Why is the stupidest interrogative because we ignore everything that is not language when we ask it. The body doesn't like a why, it prefers a how, and loves a what and when. My heart hiccups an if. It does and doesn't, which is exactly what I mean. I am able to hear the meaning and love in what Mom says that maybe Lily cannot. I do not know. I have radical empathy most of the time.

I just called Lily for two minutes but didn't know what to say because I wanted to be comforted and she doesn't know how to do that like I know how to do that. She has to share exactly everything that happens in a day because there are fewer people that listen for her than for me, which I understand, but I wasn't in that space. And I know that she just was talking to Annie, at least. And some things no one can draw out of you except yourself. Many beautiful conversations make my heart bright but tonight, I opened this document frustrated with the exhaustion, hours, aches, all. And it is always true no one asks what you need to be asked. I think. Other things occur.

Dad says Grandma, who she would be if she were ever alive, left for California two days before the [. ] of Grandpa. He and Sidney begged her not to leave and she left, which is so cruel. I have that as a bad tooth and the story doesn't even end with me. He posits she just had given up. But in her giving up, she left Grandpa's death to the kids, which a mother should not do. She smoked with COPD to accelerate her death. A death feels like a hole right now. An exit means a tear, This is how euclidian geometry works. To breach a space you must tear it. What is fun about this is that there is no tear, there is only space and everything inside it for its limited time. What information is for whom and why? Even the random Tinder conversations get bits of me that are nocturnal, unabashed, unbequem. How do I presume?

I have my exhaustion today and I want to be home. I do not feel so excited to go back to Vienna yet which is lucky for me. I want to be nearer my family. The status of my friends does haunt me but the story of the world already taught me to expect this. Start a Substack and everyone is pulled into a tighter hug? Unimportant things go. Attention is its own material and there is not enough of it. I am maybe curious about buying more or selling out.

Contrapoints has been keeping a dream journal and deciphered that most of her dream landscapes are aquariums or indoor pools. She learned this by paying attention. She does not know what the dreams mean, but in the blink of awaking, when the sleep is still heavy, the feelings are clearer. I cannot believe that every paragraph I have written has been the labor of my father letting me survive. I write to keep his family dead. I will not let him go like they let him go, becuase of the seed I was born with. The thing I guard is molten or, whatever, whatever. I represent it in the relationships I lead.

Molly is here from Vienna, in my childhood house. It is still my house. It is strange and not strange and I announce it is strange to be appropriate. Bettina is not near me and it feels so nice. Is this why I am so tired? Notice I am still writing trying to write something else. My poetry people who are smarter than me will caution me to write what I write and not what I don't write, but I want to call them on the bullshit of it, in the way that some voices are not pretty when they sing. To children all stories are worth telling and to adults no. To me in this space, of the paragraph, all stories are worth telling. I have the commodity of attention to know this is true.

Driving around at JFK and I did not mind that much. I was afraid a little bit of the drive because I am not a fan of the cars. I am upset about something but it is not being given to me, which is exciting in its own right because it proves I can never be bored if I work harder at paying attention to everything. Maybe I can fall asleep dreaming of transit.

Getting coffee with Jarel in Berlin. The supermarket. I liked his face and I was so alone. It has been long enough that nostalgia is taking the place of the details. Words feel strange because some people cannot even agree on a color being the same, so what is a mother? I was looking at Jarel on the phone or my dad's dead parents were looking at Jarel through the cells just dying. I will not supplant wonder with another thing. I cannot figure out what a variable is. Things feel hazy, monumental, and psychedelic behind me. I can barely stand to look at this screen as moments surge and bubble up and abate and abscond. A beautiful thing will save me later. But I will keep trying to write about the things which do not grab my attention, and not because I fear being forgotten.

Humanity is a story, a tapestry, and not one person has the obligation to weave a coherent one. Just to focus on your thread and get it to the next stitch, next to another, next to another, and. Write the story well to abolish the end. If the story is 1,000,000 pieces no one will ever pick up or has picked up, then is that still a story or will the word burst? I am still wondering about Jarel with my headache. My headache is ripples in pond-memory.

Not even the five letter name, which whoever I become may not immediately recall, can quite find me. I'll be more concept than boy these days to fit my lungs into this human box. A few adjectives are ridges of weather over the country of my self. Which is just stupid enough to mean. I might fortify behind a few activities and values and make a long list of everything so far and see what sticks, like spaghetti at the wall. I fear I will be a worse parent because I still think I am so important, but I do not know what I know so hope is a viable prognosis and I will [. .] and enlightenment will do exactly what it needs to do.

Ending is symptomatic of form. Things just happen to stop is that. The effect of that is all the human bits I orbit poetry around. The nature of a thing ceasing feels supernova in the writing. And gasses gather back together and form clouds and stars come back, maybe. I will be here and there. I am still possibly a little frustrated and I may not forgive myself for everything but I will let the fear nestle deeper inside of curiosity and,

Jordi asked me, "hey cutie, how are you doing?" and I thought he did not like me. I told Miquel I dreamed of him because I see his face all of the time. Looking at my little dog reminded me of the safety of the sleeping I did next to him. The sleepy body. Sleepy bims. My back is touching Lorenz's back and the first music is the human breath repeating. Is repetition carnal as Charlie said? The mechanisms of repetition are possible more salient than the effects. I will be in that room for a few more months and have other exhaustions. This is what I wanted to say instead of sleeping. Miquel says I make him less lonely and Dan says he is glad to know me. I am drinking the typing and turning into breathing. The fingers in process, even my eyes drawn across this page. I don't share a lot with most people and I do feel fine with that. Now I will try to sleep again.

[purplesaline]

Screen time isn't actually the problem.

The problem is a lot more complex than that, but some of the biggest issues are these

1) The balance between passive entertainment and active entertainment.

In this way computers and iPads and phones can actually be a lot better for a kid to spend time with than a TV. Active entertainment engages the brain and fine motor control in ways that passively consuming media doesn't allow for. Of course kids can and do just watch videos on these devices as well, but it's a good example of why what is being done with the device is more important to the discussion and it can't be over-simplified into device=bad

2) Stress management and recovery

For a lot of kids, especially kids with additional mental health concerns, sensory processing disorders as one example, school can be incredibly overwhelming for them and by the time they get home their poor brains are just Done. Trying to make them engage in more "appropriate" play that requires higher levels of processing by their overworked brains is actually harmful and often results in a meltdown or shut down. In these instances passive entertainment helps them de-stress and helps to block out unwanted and unnecessary stimuli that would continue to put more strain on their overwhelmed brains. Watching videos or playing simple, soothing games should be encouraged in situations like these, not demonized. Obviously this is a more nuanced issue and it will require a certain level of expertise (store bought is fine if you don't have your own aka don't hesitate to ask a therapist for help understanding your kid's needs) to determine how much time the kid needs to recover each day. For some kids screen time from when they get home until they go to bed many days can actually be a healthy thing, for others more than an hour would be detrimental. It's all individual and figuring out the right balance is as much an art as it is a science. What it boils down to is you can't just say "More than X amount of screentime per day is Bad".

3) Social interaction

For kids with Social anxiety, social development disorders, and kids who struggle with allistic/neurotypical social customs it can be a lot easier for them to connect with peers online. Removing the stressors of fave to face communication can really help these kids become more comfortable with their peers and is a great starting place in developing healthy face to face interaction. Especially through mediums like voice chat during cooperative game play. Of course this isn't a one to one replacement for face to face socializing and shouldn't be treated as such, but it can be an incredible tool to help a struggling kid become more at ease with their peers so when they do get them opportunity to connect and interact face to face there is less anxiety involved.

And these aren't the only considerations to take into account, just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

So yeah, stop with the "screentime should be limited to X hours a day at most or it's harmful to your kid" generalizations. It's not only wrong (in that it refuses to account for differing needs), it shames parents into avoiding the use of a tool that can actually be incredibly helpful in improving the well-being of their child.

And the same is true for us adults too, by the way. Don't let people guilt you for your screentime if it's not interfering with your ability to live a meaningful and fulfilling life. If you need help learning the difference between healthy coping skills that improve your quality of life and maladaptive coping skills that can be harmful I highly recommend speaking to a therapist if one is accessible, and if you can't access one there's a lot of resources online that can help you understand the difference.

I don't know how to break it to you all but a bad parent will parent badly with books and a good parent will parent well with an iPad.

Ipads don't make the "ipad kid". What upsets you is a child who is being given something distracting and potentially obnoxious to those around them so that the parent doesn't have to deal with engaging with their child. And it's not new.

I grew up before the invention of the ipad and the complaints were the same. It was "tv kids" and "Gameboy kids". And it was book kids too, though people rarely complained about those kids because it didn't make noise and bother them personally so they no longer cared. Because the "it's for the good of the child!" argument dried up real fast as soon as it was something that didn't affect them.

A good parent who is engaging with their child's interests can do so with an iPad or television. A bad parent can say "take this and leave me alone" with a book or a toy. The problem is that some kids were raised by objects. By whatever kept them busy and entertained and away from their parents. Sure, there are parents who need to realize that's what they're doing and would benefit from changing their parenting style by limiting electronics use, but "if you give your kid an electronic toy, it means you're a bad parent" is not the same thing and largely misses the actual source of the problem.

Your arbitrary standards of what "good children" doing "good child activities" is as restricting.