I have this... stuff that bounces around in my head & I have to do something with it... so here it is. My thoughts uncensored, to be fair you've been warned. ^_~!
These are the confessions of a part-time vegan, former pastry chef, and a full time epicurean.
no offense but… whats the point in saying something rude about someone’s favorite things to their face just bc you don’t personally like it or have the same taste as them… like what do u get out of that interaction other than prove that you can’t respect your friend’s interests
It doesn’t rule my life, but it used to. Knowing that I have the capacity for that kind of thought is exactly why it doesn’t rule my life like it used to. I’m perfectly aware that I’m going to have that capacity forever, as studies have shown that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is genetic (if you have a parent with OCD, as I do, you have a fifty-fifty chance) and is caused by abnormal brain circuitry, which means you’re stuck with it. And I am okay with that. I’ll survive. Recently, readers have asked me a lot how I learned to control it, so this is my story.*
*with the obvious warning that I am not a therapist and you are not me and I am not you and this is just my story your mileage may vary.
I was an anxious child. OCD and anxiety play very well together, and back then, I didn’t really know what was happening. I was a twitchy creature of secret rituals.
The first thing that helped me was when I realized that my obsessions weren’t normal. Not everyone felt this way. And not all thoughts had to feel this way, either.
The second thing that helped me was realizing that OCD didn’t really look the way it looked on television. Obsession could be about germs or cracks in the sidewalk, but really, it turns out that I can obsess about all kinds of things.
The third thing that helped me was figuring out that my compulsions weren’t always straightforward. Sometimes they were directly related to the obsession:
Tags in shirts —–> change clothing eleven times a day
tweets —–> refresh the screen every twelve seconds
Others, not so much:
Dying before making a mark —-> replacing all other activities like eating and sleeping with research, acquisition, and practicing of a new musical instrument
Datsuns —-> i don’t even know how i ended up with a datsun but i resent that entire chapter of my life
When my OCD was in control of me, it changed the way I looked at the world. Example. Here is life:
Life is always full of both bad and good things. Also trees. There will always be disasters and miracles happening in tandem. Mental illness changes the way you see it, though. For instance, a depressed person:
A content person:
The good or bad things don’t go away. You just point your gaze in a different direction. You are able to minimize some things and expand on others. When I got obsessive thoughts, they shifted my gaze onto something and held it there. It didn’t have to be something huge. It could have been about if my hair was dirty, or if I had said a prayer correctly, or if I had the precise same amount of air in each of my car’s tires.
In my head, the thought, whatever it was, became all encompassing.
It didn’t matter what else I tried to do, my mind would return to it. It became everything, my whole world, looped again and again and again.
I don’t even know if those are what lady bugs look like. I guess that’s okay. It’s a metaphor. They are only what I imagine ladybugs to look like, and my obsessive thoughts are not real thoughts, either. They aren’t really me. They are something my brain does to process stress and uncertainty and decision-making.***
***this took me a long time to figure out. More in a bit.
My personal breakthrough came when I decided that I would give myself rules. I was a champion with rules. I was a champion with rituals. I was a champion with things that involved numbers and counting and generally being compulsive. So my rule was that if I caught myself thinking about something obsessively, the timer began.
I would tell myself I could obsess for a certain number of minutes, and then I had to do something else until a designated time when I was allowed to obsess over it again. I could obsess for ten minutes. Then I had to put it down completely for thirty minutes. Then I could have another ten minutes. Then I had to put it down for two hours. Then I could have another ten minutes. I wasn’t allowed to act on any of the thoughts, either.
I told myself a rule was a rule. I couldn’t cheat on the time. And when I put it down, I had to really mean that I was putting it down. Did I want to be free or not?
And it began to work. I began to be able to reward myself with less and less obsessing time.
And then the really amazing thing happened, the thing that changed my life. Once I had spent enough time disciplining my obsessive thoughts, I realized … they weren’t really my thoughts. They were markedly different in character from my ordinary thoughts. The further I got from them, the more I realized that they were mental illness, not me, and moreover, that I could be free of them if I wanted to be. All I had to do was identify a thought as obsessive when it first appeared:
And then give it the time it deserved:
And I got better and better at it. I still sometimes have to give myself three minutes, especially when under stress. I still have to sometimes remove myself from a physical location to give myself those three minutes. And sometimes I still end up with a Datsun. But mostly, I just live my life, and it’s invisible.
So much of it is knowing that it’s the place your brain goes to under stress. Knowing that you can be out from under it. Knowing that ladybugs don’t really look like that. I just googled them and it turns out they have an entire additional segment in front of that black bit where the head goes which means I just drew an entire flock of headless ladybugs.
in case you guys wanna know what modern high school dances are like, at mine despacito came on and everyone t-posed around this one kid as he fortnite danced like his life depended on it
to be fair, at a school dance when i was in school, a kid i knew had completely memorized the choreography to the gangnam style music video and the rest of us yell-sang what does the fox say noises at her while she did it.. so like, not much different. same soil different pot
if cotton eye’d joe came on everyone would make the neatest fuckign lines and do the dance in sync. it was like a cult. but hell yeah it was fun as shit
one thing I don’t think people realize is that in arguments about human rights, it’s not about trying to persuade the other party. it’s not about them at all. they’ve already made up their mind.
it’s about persuading the audience.
if I call out my teacher on being homophobic I’m not trying to change his opinion. I’m trying to convince any closeted kids in the room that they’re not the monsters he’s made them out to be.
if I argue with my aunt about how racist she’s being it’s not because I expect to change her mind. it’s because I’m hoping to god my cousin’s kids hear and learn that maybe skin color doesn’t mean what she says it means.
people will try to hush you and say “they’re not going to change their minds, don’t bother” but it’s not about them. it was never about them.
Peter B Parker was just minding his business depression eating when he got transported into another dimension for a life changing and affirming healing experience.
marvel character posters → steve rogers / captain america - requested by @capstvenrogrs “You people telling me how I just don’t understand? When it’s you people - you clever people - who don’t get it. I don’t let people die because it’s the lesser of two evils, or expedient, or because it serves the greater good. I don’t compare the act against something else. I see someone who needs help, and I help. You think it’s a weakness. You think it’s simple. But you’re wrong. It’s what makes us human, which is exactly what we’re supposed to be fighting for. I know who I am. I rescue the helpless. I raise up the hopeless. I don’t measure people’s lives - I save them.”
Sure, relationships typically start with a honeymoon phase that then grows into something deeper but a bit more mellow if things work out, but it’s depressing as fuck that this has turned into a really, really common script for straight relationships that says it’s totally normal and inevitable for dudes to just become more and more emotionally checked out of the relationship, and leave it to their girlfriend/wife to perform if she wants to get even a crumb of affection from him. I’m so fucking tired of seeing women constantly being taught that decades of emotional neglect is just our lot in life.
what “getting out of the honeymoon phase” should mean: you aren’t joined at the hip anymore and can spend time apart, but you still greatly enjoy eachother’s company and deliberately make time to be together. you’re not just a unit, you’re a matched set (like, you’re susan and bob rather than susanandbob). you start to see eachother’s flaws and don’t put eachother on a pedestal but instead love eachother as human beings, flaws and all.
what it should NOT mean: you barely talk anymore. you feel like two completely different people, tied together by a frayed thread. you’re annoyed by eachother’s flaws and don’t like to be around eachother
similarly: “relationships are hard, they take a lot of work” means that cooperation on a daily basis in both the practical and emotional realms takes conscious effort. you can’t coast on those honeymoon feelings forever, and you aren’t psychic, so you have to pay attention and communicate so you can honor each other’s wants and needs.
it should not mean that you’re fighting every two days or walking on eggshells to avoid the anger of an unreasonable partner or breaking your back trying to get the slightest sign of affection or respect from someone who’s checked out and doesn’t care about you.
