I think so many people are so deeply alienated from themselves that they have no clue how to exercise their free will and autonomy. For some, this alienation runs so deep that they are afraid of their own autonomy and humanity. It is completely understandable why one would have those feelings, but it can be worrisome.
I want to help others who feel this way, so here are small things I have done to exercise my free will:
Add "guilty pleasure" songs to playlists and actually listen to them (I have a ton of late 1990s-early 2000s music I listen to now proudly that I never listened to in the past out of shame)
Getting the décor item, bath set, bed spread, ect. in the patterns you like, even if it's "childish" (I got a dinosaur-themed wastebasket from the kids' décor section and I adore it)
Taking a new route to get to a place you go to often
Eat dessert first
Celebrate well, and often
Collect things that are "odd" or don't seem like an "acceptable" thing to collect (somebody on my "for you" page collects dandelion crayola crayons and it was so cool!!!!!!)
Incorporate one new piece in an outfit you wear frequently (e.g., a new chain, a necklace, ribbons, bracelets, ect.). Challenge yourself to add onto the outfits if you feel up for it.
Sing along to songs without worrying that you sound "good" or your intonation is completely accurate
Read a book from a genre you weren't allowed to read as a kid (comics, thrillers, mysteries, anything!)
Walk without having a specific destination or goal
Pick up a new craft without expecting yourself to master it or to ever be "good" enough. Get your hands messy.
I don't want to shame anybody for not feeling as though they have free will or that they are exempt from exercising it. However, I wanted to give ideas so that you might read this list and find your own ways to express your intrinsic autonomy and will. You deserve to be a person, to feel alive, not just living. That is what our lives are for.
18K notes
·
View notes
Stop Weight Loss Resistance
Stop Weight Loss Resistance
Product Name: Stop Weight Loss Resistance
(more…)
View On WordPress
0 notes
Matthew Mercer's video/announcement is exactly why the practice of fans demanding statements from "celebrities" is so problematic.
If people CAN make a statement and speak out and feel like they are in a place to do so, they should. And if people make statements on the wrong side of things they SHOULD be held accountable and called out for their bullshit.
But you never know what someone is going through, you never know what someone is struggling with and capable of emotionally, and you never know what people are doing privately. Just because it's not being screamed from the rooftops, doesn't mean it's not being done.
Personally, I have stayed largely quiet on social media regarding the Genocide occurring in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis occurring at the hands of Israel because I spend my days providing therapy to those who, like Matt, are just stuck and depressed with everything that's happening in the world and just don't have it in them to fight yet another thing that's happening, and like them, by the time I get home, I need to separate myself from that.
That doesn't mean that I haven't done what I can, that I haven't donated and called my representatives and signed petitions, it just means that what one person has the capacity to do, someone else might not have the capacity to do.
255 notes
·
View notes
reading supercut: disability, body image, and trauma
A glimpse into the clothes thrashing around in the washing machine of my mind, with apologies that it is still a wet lump and not an actual synthesis of ideas.
From Easy Beauty: A Memoir by Chloé Cooper Jones:
[This event] embedded a damaging idea in me, one I’d recognize deeply when I read Scarry years later: beauty was a matter of particulars aligning correctly. My body put me in a bracketed, undercredited sense of beauty. But if I could get the particulars lined up just right, I could be re-seen, discovered like the palm tree is discovered. To be deserving of the whole range of human desires, I had to be extraordinary in all other aspects.
In this new light, I started to see my work, my intellect, my skills, my moments of humor or goodness, not as valuable in themselves, but as ways of easing the impact of my ugliness. If only I could pile up enough good qualities, they could obscure my unacceptable body. [...] accepting the argument that beauty was malleable came, for me, with a cost. The Platonian view rejected me cleanly, but Hume and Scarry left a door ajar and I’ve spent a lifetime trying to contort my form to see if I could pass through it.
From Til We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by CS Lewis:
I now determined that I would go always veiled. I have kept this rule, within doors and without, ever since. It is a sort of treaty made with my ugliness. There had been a time in childhood when I didn't yet know I was ugly. Then there was a time (for in this book I must hide none of my shames or follies) when I believed, as girls do — and as Batta was always telling me — that I could make it more tolerable by this or that done to my clothes or my hair. Now, I chose to be veiled.
From Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy of Borderline Personality Disorder by Marsha Linehan:
Inhibited grieving is understandable among borderline patients. People can only stay with a very painful process or experience if they are confident that it will end some day, some time—that they can "work through it," so to speak. It is not uncommon to hear borderline patients say they feel that if they ever do cry, they will never stop Indeed, that is their common experience—the experience of not being able to control or modulate their own emotional experiences. [...] In the face of such helplessness and lack of control, inhibition and avoidance of cues associated with grieving are not only understandable, bur perhaps wise at times. Inhibition, however, has its costs. [...]
Volkan (1983) describes an interesting phenomenon, "established pathological mourning", which is similar to the pattern I am describing. In established pathological mourning, the individual wishes to complete mourning, but at the same time persistently attempts to undo the reality of the loss.
From How to Respond to Criticism by Danny Lavery:
Apologize, but don’t really mean it, and plant a seed of secret resentment so deep in your own heart that years later you can’t even remember that you’re the one who nurtured it and made it grow, it seems that much like a native part of you.
From Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed:
[After learning that state child protective services had made a budgetary decision to only intervene with children under 12, to one of the teenagers that regularly shared stories of abuse at home]
I told her it was not okay, that it was unacceptable, that it was illegal and that I would call and report this latest, horrible thing. But I did not tell her it would stop. I did not promise that anyone would intervene. I told her it would likely go on and she’d have to survive it. That she’d have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it [...] I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.
From Essays in Aesthetics by Jean-Paul Sartre:
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
From "I Know What You Think of Me" by Tim Kreider:
if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
161 notes
·
View notes
I hate that having ADHD is seen as “quirky”. Or one of the “lesser” mental disorders.
It is agonizing.
You are constantly forgetting everything, names, locations, tasks, items, everything. You misplace things subconsciously and have to spend half hours looking for them, only to find them in places you genuinely cannot recall at all. Your memory is nonexistent. You are constantly aware that you have things you need to do or need to be doing but you cannot remember what. You know you are forgetting something but it doesn’t come to you, so you spend all day anxious. You get awful moments of dysfunction where words become incomprehensible and you are incapable of completing a task, but people are quick to assume you are lazy no matter how hard you’re trying. And one of the worst parts is that you KNOW you’re letting people down. You know you can’t grasp time so you’re showing up late even though you left extremely early. You know someone expected something from you by a deadline but you genuinely couldn’t remember. And in academics, you know some of your teachers are trying hard to be accommodating but you can’t even do the most basic tasks by the given deadlines. Or! You get teachers that do not even understand what mental disorders are and accuse you of not trying. People think you are using your disorder as an excuse just because you know you have it and use it to explain some of your behaviors. If you mask well enough to never need help, you don’t get diagnosed even though it’s taking all of your strength just to get by. If you don’t mask well enough and you are fem presenting like I am you are told you aren’t acting out so you are fine. You can’t win. It’s not quirky to have ADHD, and we aren’t faking it.
It’s a constant struggle, and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.
394 notes
·
View notes
*ೃ༄ if avatar characters had twitter ?!
characters : lo’ak, neteyam, ao’nung, tsireya, kiri (if you squint), roxto
overall genre — mini tropes : fluff — jealous!neteyam, pining!ao’unung, trolling!lo’ak x tsireya, natureluvr!kiri, beefy!roxto,
warnings : some swearing
a/n : i laughed SM making this LMFAOAOOA. unhinged. didn’t expect this to go the way it did at first. this is my first fanfic (?)/content post abt avatar and was really inspired by modern au of avatar like tweets or hcs. but this doesn’t rlly take place in a modern au? i kept it in atwow/awa’atlu context. anyway, hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as i did making it!!
╭── ⋅⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅⋅ ──╮
191 notes
·
View notes
One small thing in the F&C finale that was very augh for me was just ... what Simon needed. I mean, yes, therapy good, but I dislike the line of thought that it's some cure all— where is Simon's entire support system??? Marceline, Finn...? Even the old wizards, Gunther etc would've been incredibly relevant to mesh into that final quick cut montage of him healing. Just one little scene of him talking to Marceline, tearing up and getting a hug/comforted, would have tied up that bit in Episode 2 where he feels like he doesn't have anyone/feel needed.
316 notes
·
View notes