#i am a huge weeny who does not do well in winter | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

greenofallshades · 7 years

Text

I saved this for when I had the time because I liked the questions, and because it was sent by a friend, @rapid-apathy. So I had a long rainy weekend and was able to do it. I’ve been holding onto it forever. You’re supposed to answer the questions you like, delete the ones you don’t, and add your own to make 100. I didn’t bullet mine but this is close to 100 either way, I guess.

So here’s a little tell-all, if anyone wants to know. I’m tagging some unsuspecting souls so you guys can shake your fists at me and say well, fuck, it’s Monday, so naturally. (Seriously, no one feel obligated to do it..pretending you never got tagged is perfectly fine, lol).

@simcoedefensesquad, @abewoodhullturncoat, @cupric-solution, @enouementonism, @thesnakeinthegarden, @zaggyswag, @080939, @teagrounebulous, @dolfinsatdawn, @west-coast-happiness

The meaning behind my url: greenofallshades, Green is my favorite color and adding the last part made it sound vaguely...interesting, or something.

A picture of me: will post one soon.

How many tattoos i have and what they are: none

Last time i cried and why: During the TURN finale, lol, but does that count? Before that, a fight with my husband.

Favorite band: Impossible to pick one, just cannot. Also I’m one of those people who when you ask me to pick my favorite something I freeze and can think of nothing.

Biggest turn offs: Pretentiousness, number one by far. Also people who drop hints instead of asking for something, game-playing instead of being direct, and braggarts.

Top 5 (insert subject): Top five cookies! Girl Scout Thin Mint, soft baked chocolate chip, M&M cookies, Nutter Butters, and Oreos.

Tattoos i want: *shrug* none

Biggest turn ons: strong arms, hairy chest

Age: old lady by Tumblr kid standards, I guess

Ideas of a perfect date: Sitting in front of a fire in an empty tavern with a 6'3" ginger Queen's Ranger, drinking to the point that I'm not drunk but feel good, and he gets loose and starts telling me stuff no one else knows, then getting on his horse with him (me in front, being held securely by him) and riding out to a secluded cabin in the woods only he knows about, where we spend the night having wild sex and getting as loud as we want.

Life goal: Not to have any huge regrets on my deathbed when it comes to people in my life.

Piercings i want: none

Relationship status: married

Favorite movie: Can't pick one but I love Bram Stoker's Dracula, Pulp Fiction, Gladiator, Goodfellas, Thirty Days of Night. Not into chick flicks very much. Also a couple of old movies---Rebecca (a total mind fuck) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which I STRONGLY rec. It's a middle-aged married couple who have company over and spend the night drinking and cursing and tearing each other apart with complete viciousness.

A fact about my life: I'm boring but okay with it

Phobia: Any and all bugs, especially flying ones. I wish I could make all of them extinct, including butterflies.

.Height: 5'5"

Are you a virgin? A what?

What is your shoe size? 8

What’s your sexual orientation? straight

Do you smoke, drink, or take any drugs? Wine sometimes....red. Used to like white, can’t stand it now, and beer makes my throat close up

Someone you miss: My parents...they had me very late in life and they're gone now.

What’s one thing you regret? Not being a better daughter

First celebrity you think of when someone says attractive: Samuel Roukin, are you shocked?

Favorite ice cream? french vanilla

One insecurity: Body image. I had an eating disorder when I was a teenager and body issues will stay with me until I die.

What my last text message says: From me---I might answer late because we’re doing late dinner. To me---How does she afford it

Have you ever taken a picture naked? Taken one, no---taken one OF somebody, yes

Have you ever kissed a member of the same sex? No

Have you ever slept naked? Yes

Have you ever stole money from a friend? No

Have you ever gotten in a car with people you just met? Yes

Have you ever been in a fist fight? No

Have you ever had feelings for someone who didn’t have them back? Yeah, I think everybody has

Have you ever been arrested? No

Have you ever made out with a stranger? Yes

Have you ever laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by? Yes

Have you ever been lonely? Yes

Have you ever been to a club? Clubbing and dancing, so much fun

Have you ever felt an earthquake? Yes, in Virginia it's a rare thing and I thought Jesus was coming back.

Have you ever touched a snake? I've held snakes...they're adorable.

Have you ever ran a red light? Yes, and it was stupid as hell because my husband witnessed a horrible accident when someone ran a red. A man was ejected out of his car into the air came down, and hit the pavement, dead. DON'T RUN RED LIGHTS

Have you ever been in a car accident? Yes

Have you ever cried yourself to sleep? Pretty sure I have

Have you ever sang karaoke? No and never will for the mercy of the world

Have you ever done something you told yourself you wouldn’t? Oh yeah...for example today I told myself I wouldn't touch the box of Cheezits in the pantry.

Have you ever laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? No, but I've laughed so hard I retched

Have you ever slept with someone at least 5 years older or younger? Yes

Have you ever dream that you married someone? Yes and I woke up and it was true.

Have you ever got your tongue stuck to a flag pole? No, but points for a question that made me shudder.

Have you ever ever gone to school partially naked? *side eye glance*

Have you ever brushed your teeth? *second side eye glance* I hope to hell

Have you ever ever too scared to watch scary movies alone? Yes....I cannot watch Thirty Days of Night alone, even it's daytime

Have you ever been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on? No, and it's a good thing, because you don't push a woman who has naturally curly hair into the water or your ass is going to have consequences.

Have you ever been told you’re hot by a complete stranger? Yes

Have you ever broken a bone? Just a toe

Have you ever been easily amused? Lol, every damn day...wouldn't have it any other way.

Have you ever laughed so hard you cried? Many times

Have you ever mooned/flashed someone? No

Have you ever forgotten someone’s name? Yes, embarrassing

Have you ever give us one thing about you that no one knows I never have and I am not going to have creeps following this blog, lol.

What was your last dream? I dreamed Samuel Roukin played a biker in black leather. Are you seeing the trend here?

Would you be up for interplanetary travel if it was a thing? Hard pass...I will stay safe on my couch with my fleece throw.

If you could travel back in time, where would you go? Omg. Again, can’t pick but I’m leaving this question up because it’s a good one.

Do you prefer tech or real books for reading? I like both, but prefer books

Do you dread doctor visits or do they not bother you? They make me anxious

Favorite fashion decade of the twentieth century? 1940s

Are you wearing nail polish and if so, what color? Manicure, Essie Watermelon; pedicure, OPI I Vant To Bite Your Neck

Are you into working out or no? I've always worked out, but I'm so burned out now

Do you have a temper? Yes

Do you have one item you treat yosef with, and if so, what is it? Josie Maran whipped argan oil

Do you eat meat? Yes I am a happy carnivore

If yes, how do you like it cooked? Well done and y'all can drag me for that all you want

Ever had a boss or a teacher you absolutely hated? Oh yeah....a bitch boss who loved making lives miserable. She snatched my engagement ring and hid it for a day so I would think I'd lost it, then gave it back at the end of the day and laughed. I was frantic. I wish I could have a do-over with that bitch.

Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate? Coffee

Do you wear makeup? Yes

If you wear perfume, what's your scent type/favorite fragrance? I like fresh/clean scents...love Versace VersenseScented

Do you have a girl crush? Yes

Candles, wax melts, or incense? Wax melts....I have a shameful amount of those bitches. Walmart, $2, too cheap to pass up.

Favorite season of the year? Fall, fall, fall, then winter

Fanfic---do you prefer smut or fluff? Smut, but well-written fluff about the right character (GUESS WHO) is good too

Do you like taking selfies? Why or why not? I hate it. Old body image issues, not photogenic, etc.

Do you want children? We can't, but we'll be okay.

Do you prefer lots of friends or just a few good friends? Just a few, not interested in crowds of pseudo-friends

Introvert or extrovert, or mixture of both? Mixture...can and do initiate conversation with strangers but I'm an only child and I need solitude to be sane

Ocean/beach or mountains? Ocean, if it's cold, cloudy, and the water is wild and gray. Otherwise mountains.

Morning person or night person? Morning...first cup of coffee makes me annoyingly wired.

Do you initiate conversations with strangers? Yes

Milk or dark chocolate? Dark

What do you post on your blog? Mostly Simcoe stuff, other TURN material, with some Walking Dead, Vikings, and The Strain. Occasionally fashion, quotes, etc.

Is it hard for you to apologize when you're in the wrong? If I know I've done wrong or hurt someone I have no problem apologizing. I wouldn't want it to be otherwise. And if I ever piss off any of y’all, let me know.

Love at first sight? No. Like/compatibility that turns into love, yes.

Best/funniest Halloween memory? A couple, I guess. The first was a party when my hairstylist friend did my make up and I went as a gypsy. It was perfect, the hair, the armloads of cheap bangles and the huge earrings, a white peasant shirt with a flowing multicolored skirt, etc.

The second is one I was only told about, and it happened years ago, but I laugh when I think about it. My father-in-law(to be) was home alone and a flood of kids kept coming to the door. He gave out all the candy, then started throwing in cans of Beanie Weenies, and when they were gone, he started handing out money. Finally he said to hell with it, turned off the light, and went to bed.

Did your first crush work out or was it unrequited? Unrequited

Do you like old movies---and by old, I mean OLD old? Yes, I've even watched a couple of silent movies. The main thing about old movies that bugs is me the ever-present music.

Do you tan or burn? Burn---don't care about tanning/lying in the sun with the heat beating down on me. I like myself pale, anyway.

Do you think people deserve second chances? Generally yes. Hard to say no considering how many times I've fucked up. But child molesters, that kind of thing--hell no.

What animal would be cutest if scaled down to the size of a cat? A T-Rex

Do you have any weird food likes/dislikes? I hate cheese, esp. melted. (Ikr?) Also white creamy foods...cream soups, mayonnaise, etc

.What's the funniest real person's name you've ever heard? Andrew Lincoln is really Andrew Clutterbuck

#asks #long ass asks #more than you ever wanted to know about me

7 notes · View notes

princeofraspberries · 7 years

Text

it’s time for my annual “Spring is coming, time to start worrying about thunderstorms” post.

Spring is coming. I’m worried about thunderstorms. This has been a PSA.

I was gonna just leave the post at that but isn’t this what read mores are for?

I really really should have been doing therapy for that over the winter.

But as much as I am completely an advocate for therapy I haven’t found a single therapist of any of the ones I’ve tried (0/6 for those of you playing along at home) who has actually helped someone with a phobia before.

And I know that’s a bad excuse because I know the answer: try more therapists. But the only therapist that I actually felt was promising couldn’t figure out how to make exposure therapy work in her office for this specific phobia, and I ended up getting *more* worked up about it.

It’s also worth noting: exposure therapy sucks balls.

Like I’m not saying it doesn’t work, I believe that it works, but holy shit it’s miserable and it puts you on edge, and for something like thunderstorms where you only have to deal with it some of the time, it’s really hard to convince yourself independently to do things that scare the shit out of you. And like I know you need to do Hard Things outside of therapy to get therapy to work effectively but I feel like to some extent I was just phyching myself out about things that wouldn’t typically bother me quite so much. Like, I ended up crying in therapy when she made me watch a video of a lightning strike. That wouldn’t typically be my response to that. And I don’t have an answer about how to deal with that.

Part of me just wants to get a Xanax prescription (which I effortlessly got the first time I went to see a therapist about this issue because she had no idea what to do about it so she was like “here, have a prescription for Xanax” which at the time I was like “UM” and never picked it up but in retrospect...) because it’s not like I have this problem all the time, I’d just like to not flip the fuck out every time there’s stormy weather. That strikes me as a not-terrible solution to a problem that isn’t like an ongoing stress, more like points of high-stress in an otherwise pretty standard ok state of mind. Especially since therapy is so expensive and I’ve had so little luck with it for this specific problem, and money’s getting kind of tight for my family and VERY tight for me?

Like yes, long-term, therapy to just permanently (I hope) sort this the fuck out would be good. But if doggie downers work, I will absolutely go for that. My running joke for years is I would be totally ok with just sleeping through every thunderstorm. I’m much more interested in dealing with this than I am in overcoming it, and while yes, both would be ideal, I’d be ok with settling with dealing with it!

But I also feel like if I march into a doctor’s office and go “gimme Xanax” they’re definitely not going to do it, and I also recently found out that stuff is at least on some level addictive, which I didn’t know (thanks, random therapist who prescribed it to me), so that would bear more research.

The other weird thing about all of this is just that I feel like ever since this officially became A Thing Nina Needs Therapy For, people (including me) treat the whole thing much more seriously and I’m... not sure that’s a good thing? Like, I’ve literally always been scared of thunderstorms. It makes sense, loud noises scare the shit out of me. Not entirely a separate problem.

But while I of course greatly prefer being given permission by my family to literally sit in the cement bunker in our basement during thunderstorms, I feel like the social pressure to not act like a complete weenie during storms was kind of forcing me to do exposure therapy in ways I find it difficult to get myself to do otherwise? And may have on some level been keeping this slightly more at bay? But on the other hand irresponsible exposure therapy based on social pressure was what literally caused my first panic attack, so I don’t have a good answer for that either.

And also it’s just weird because like. I don’t know. No one else in my family has a Problem like this? Like don’t get me wrong, they’ve all got various unnamed issues, and I know there’s no shame in having a mental health thing, which is why I try to be relatively open about this. But being able to tell people that I have a severe phobia of thunderstorms is a whole different ball game than actually dealing with it when it rears its head, because it goes from 0-100 REAL quick, and I’ve never really been comfortable even crying in front of people, so it makes a lot of sense that I’m uncomfortable panicking in front of people, but thunderstorms aren’t always predictable, and neither are my reactions. I got caught out on a hike last summer during a storm and it sucked, but aside from being very obviously jumpy and crying some, I sort of kept it together (partly because my dad was there and I hate going Full Panic Attack around people so I fought it actually really hard, which is absolutely not what you’re supposed to do but there it is). But then later that same day we went out (we were on vacation) to look at the stars and there were flashes from heat lightning in the distance and I couldn’t stay out there. Like, there wasn’t even any sound and I just had to go inside because I was enormously on edge from earlier and I could just tell my dad was like, so unimpressed by that, like he didn’t say anything but I think he thought I dealt with the thing earlier pretty well but it was just

I don’t know

like him seeing me keep a panic attack in check seemed ok at the time because he’s seen me completely and utterly lose control and panic before and That. Sucked. So I was glad at this time that I had like made it through that storm without being a total weenie (I mean... I hid behind him when there was a flash of lightning nearby and when we found a porch I hid in the corner with earplugs, covered my ears, closed my eyes/covered them with a bandana, and faced the corner and cried but was able to put together coherent sentences so like.......... we’re considering that a success. for a sense of relative reference. I don’t panic attack very gracefully.)

But the flip side of that, of this being (or at least looking like) a more normal fear rather than a Boy Howdy Get That Child To A Therapist kind of thing is that I think he thinks he gets it. Like I’m sure there are things he’s scared of, but by using that frame of reference, I don’t think he quite gets just how long it takes me to put my pieces back together after I’ve gone through a storm. So I think he saw the thing with the heat lightning as a cop-out, and maybe it was, but at the time it was just too much. Like, I wasn’t panicking, so maybe I should have stuck to it and used it as honestly probably the best kind of exposure therapy I can get: the weather phenomenon without the noise or close proximity. But I was still moving through that post-panic-attack sort of raw fog I get? and I just felt like I couldn’t do it. So like on the one hand I feel like my dad (although of course he’d never say it) feels like this is a mountain out of a molehill things (if I were to hazard a guess I’m imagining this is also the camp of my brother), and on the other hand I feel like my mom is taking my moderately-sized hill and looking at it like it’s a mountain.

My second-to-last therapist mentioned something about this, how when family members are too accommodating it actually makes the phobia worse because it’s like getting outside validation from a source you trust that yes, you SHOULD be scared of this, let me help you with that because of course you can’t do this on your own (when your focus should be overcoming it, rather than avoiding it, which is what this typically turns into). And that makes a lot of sense to me but also like what the hell is the middle ground? That therapist didn’t have great suggestions about alternatives. Like, since is my sole official mental health issue, I don’t have a great frame of reference for what it’s like to have people behaving ABOUT a mental health thing you’re trying to deal with.

Like, I’ve been on the other side of that, but it’s weird to have people behaving specifically because you’re having a problem, because people act weird and you’re already feeling weird and I’m super uncomfortable being the center of attention, so the whole thing just turns into a huge mess, and then with my panic attack thing, I get like, kind of dissociative/sensory overloadish afterwards? Which, I genuinely can’t tell if people are acting weird or not towards me at that point (I also typically don’t remember pretty much anything from this stage afterwards), but THAT’S when I’m probably in the most need of some kind of grounding but by then everyone’s moved on because nothing’s happening. Like, the heat lightning isn’t even making any sound, why are you going back inside? Why have you gotten out your laptop and started playing “Skinny Love” on repeat for the past 20 minutes when the rest of your family is stuck in this same room with you? Why aren’t you getting any work done?

And like obviously whatever I need during that stage (and honestly I don’t know WHAT I need specifically) is not that thing my mom does when there’s a storm inbound and she starts treating me like I’m made of glass. I mean maybe she does that, like I said, I actually can’t tell if people are acting weird around me after I’ve had a panic attack. But I’ve also gotten into extremely heated arguments with my mom after I’ve had a silent panic attack (these are fun, I discovered them last summer: apparently I can have a panic attack without doing the crying/shaking thing. None of the visual effects, same aftereffects) because the storm is over, I’m back to normal, right?

That argument was kind of fucked up actually because she was upset because I hadn’t gotten anything done during the storm, work-wise, and I was still kind of fucked up from the silent panic attack I’d had (yeah, shockingly hard to do work during these) so I couldn’t really articulate a justification for why I hadn’t gotten any work done. But like, during the storm itself she brought me tea and kept checking in to make sure I was ok, which I wasn’t, but was faking really really well because that was one of my first silent panic attacks (maybe they’re anxiety attacks? idk, they suck, although admittedly slightly less than the messier version) so I didn’t really understand how screwy my mental state was because I was used to the handy bodily cues like “congrats, you’ve achieved fetal position” and “the inability to breathe like a human.”

But afterwards I found myself in that same fog, and she turned out to be really angry at how inefficient I’d been during the storm, even though she’d been seemingly babying me about it at the time (which always kind of throws me off anyway for whatever reason). I’m not sure where I was going with this except that I think people treating me the way they expect me to be affected by storms kind of sucks because on the one hand managing to talk with my dad during that one storm was a wild success considering I was literally outside during a thunderstorm. And maybe my mom’s treating me like glass makes me feel more fragile and psychs me out like the therapist showing me that video of that lightning strike which totally freaked me out entirely out of proportion to what my normal reaction to that would be.

But on the other hand, afterwards always sucks, because of the “you’re done now!” mentality that makes a ton of sense, from the perspective of anyone who’s not me, but is 1000% inaccurate to the way I actually experience storms. Which of course is something I have a hell of a time articulating, as evidenced by the fact that I’ve seemingly written a term paper on the subject just now: this post is getting ridiculously long. Basically I guess my dad’s treating me normal during storms with an underlying current of “buck up” actually seems to work for me, although it does kind of suck for obvious reasons. But afterwards, when I feel like a freshly-eroded hillside or possibly like my head has been transplanted onto another body or that my entire brain has shrunk and is taking up two square inches just behind my forehead and the rest of my skull is filled with seedless grape jam... I’m not sure what I need at that point. Grounding exercises of some kind, probably, that seems like the kind of thing those would apply to.

And I think this might have been the problem I had with exposure therapy. Like, scaring yourself sucks, ergo exposure therapy sucks. But doing something that’s going to set you on edge for a day and a half is much less manageable/sustainable, especially if that whole other half of the thing isn’t getting addressed at all, which it wasn’t. And I’m sure there’s a way to deal with that, because exposure therapy is very much a Thing for overcoming avoidance based in trauma of any kind, not just phobias. And I suspect that the whole lingering stress-haze issue I have a) has a name and b) is a thing that there’s definitely a way to deal with in an exposure therapy context. I think phobias may actually be a “and also this” kind of addition to the exposure therapy repertoire, actually in terms of practice, because I think several of the therapists I met with had done exposure therapy, just not for phobias.

As a side note, I know there’s like a whole thing that it’s a panic disorder because phobia is an antiquated term, but on my sheet at the doctor’s office it says “specific phobia” so, whatever. It is annoying because apparently there’s a really structured way to work through phobias, there’s like a workbook that one therapist knew about and it’s super structured and very much supposed to be effective but I don’t know the name of the workbook and since everyone and their sister thinks they have a phobia of something I have no idea how to tell the self-help books by Dr. Quack from this workbook that’s apparently magical. Yay.

And finally (I hope finally, because holy hell has this gotten long), aside from the whole “but wait I can’t make a thunderstorm happen in my office in the dead of winter so idk how to do exposure therapy today let’s talk about your homework instead” thing, there’s the issue of loud noises.

I freaking hate loud noises. And I know this is related to why I’ve got the thunderstorm thing, because that just makes sense. But this is where things get complicated, because how much of this is a fear of loud noises (phonophobia, in case anyone was wondering, which I do fit the description of), and how much is just noise sensitivity? Because sensitivity to loud noises is also very much a thing that people can have, and I fit that description too! It makes sense that if I’m sensitive to loud noises, they cause me anxiety. And it makes sense that if loud noises cause me anxiety, situations (like, for example, thunderstorms) where loud noises represent actual danger and are also very unpredictable in timing and volume would scare the absolute shit out of me. Which, again, makes sense based on my reaction to storms: I’m totally ok with sleeping through them. It’s not the storm I’m afraid of, it’s experiencing it, with volume boing the main factor. And then my brain snowballed that in various ways (ex: no, nina, the storm is not actually out to get you, and can’t see you if you move), but the basis is... solid.

Like, sensitivity to stimulus > anxiety about stimulus > fear of situation where exposure to stimulus is unpredictable. That makes a ton of sense, and like, yes there are parts of my thunderstorm fear that are catastrophic thinking and get entirely out of hand and become illogical. But I have this nagging feeling that I’m only gonna be able to walk this thing back so far. Sensitivity to sound is less of a therapy thing and more of a neurological thing. And of course therapy can help you deal with a lot of things like that but dealing with =/= overcoming, and I think the focus in the therapy I’ve been to so far about this has been focused on overcoming the phobia, when I’m not actually certain about how feasible that is if I remain sensitive to loud noises. Which I’m fairly sure I will.

So while I remain a complete advocate of therapy, I feel like my progress on this will always be pretty limited: like, I can cut down on the catastrophic thinking and the lingering anxiety (I’m guessing) and probably get to a workable point if I find a good therapist and work at it hard for a while and keep up with healthy coping techniques, year after year. But at the same time it’s hard to kind of justify all that money and time and emotional energy towards limited progress on something that will always remain a problem when like, Xanax exists, and could potentially get me to the same point. I mean even if we’re calling that a cop-out, which, ok, it might be a cop-out, I can’t think of better exposure therapy than being faced with a situation that you find scary, but not getting a sharp fear response. Like, going too far on exposure therapy at any one point can set you backwards in progress because you get overwhelmed with fear. Wouldn’t Xanax... kind of bypass that? Like, suddenly, I wouldn’t have to sit in the closet in my apartment and open the door one more inch every time a storm came, and back it up slightly if the storm was particularly intense. I could potentially sit in my living room, where I can see four windows, and not end up frozen with my hands over my ears. I could potentially walk to class if there were one or two rumbles on my way. That all sounds like really good exposure therapy to me.

Anyway. I bring it up because summer’s coming, and I’m not looking forward to explaining to my mom that I made no progress whatsoever on this over the winter. She keeps going out of her way to accommodate me about this and while as I mentioned earlier in some ways I definitely appreciate that, it really does make the rest of my family controlled by whether or not I get a handle on this, and I *haven’t.* Which sucks. Like, our summer vacation last year was somewhat structured around me being able to avoid being outside during storms (too bad for everyone in my family who likes backpacking and camping), so the pressure’s kind of on for this, and I haven’t even been going to therapy about it. So that, at least, is on me.

Anyway. There are plenty of other things to be worried/stressed about at the moment, but it came to mind because there was supposed to be a thunderstorm tomorrow. It’s been moved to Saturday so I won’t even have to go outside that day, so we’ll see what that looks like when it comes.

#nina whining #Nina's ramblings #astraphobia

8 notes · View notes