#is a way of learning to inhabit myself. of autonomy. of seeing myself as a person

[soldier-poet-king]

Well bit the bullet and forewarned my parents about the tattoo appt so I don't just show up one day with it, but took the cowards way out and did it while they're out of town and won't be back til Friday so I don't have to face the ire as my mother cools down

#franposting #my nonna on the other hand. im just. i dont think im gonna say anything at all tbh #it just. is what it is. #maybe putting art i have craved for so long on my body #is a way of learning to inhabit myself. of autonomy. of seeing myself as a person #not just like. a use made for a specific end #yes telos has a place but also maybe my telos isnt just to exist and burn myself up for every other person's whim #out of a sense of a guilt and an apology for my own existence #maybe. idk. maybe the duty and martyrs complex is right tho #idk. idk. been thinking a lot about family lately and how everything mostly just hurts. #the good days are just. neutral. theyre good by virtue of not being actively bad #but im realizing i genuinely dont know how to care for people or relate to people properly and its just. well. hm. #that sure is a thing im gonna have to live with for the rest of my life #i feel odd and unsettled and offputting even to myself. alas. #honestly work being unfulfilling and boring is part of the problem #without concrete clear and interesting goals and tasks i lose direction and fall apart #i need to be focused on things and tasks or else I'll die. or navel gaze my way into solipsism

[pemberlyprose]

Mycelium and Mexican Gothic

While sitting and listening to music, I got thinking about Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Over the past few days, I have been ruminating on what I'd like to write about regarding this story and how it has affected me. Typically, my process for writing essays, formal or informal, involves a lot of black tea and annotating.  Today, inspired by Hozier and Noah Khan, I want to have a brief interpretation/contemplation of a single topic instead: mushrooms being a metaphor for toxic family dynamics in Mexican Gothic. 

SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THIS NOVEL! 

(Also, this is highly summarized because I am a creature fueled by caffeine and chaos and can't be bothered right now. Please forgive any errors).

Taking place in the isolated mountains of Mexico's countryside, Mexican Gothic points a crooked and mishappen finger at the horrors lying beneath the Doyle family's history and home. Noemi, the protagonist of the story, arrives to the Doyles' house to call into question the care of her cousin, Catalina, who has been sending frantic and incoherent letters about voices and apparitions since moving into her English husband's home. As Noemi spends time with the Doyle family, and her cousin, she begins to unravel more of their secrets. Eventually she becomes so deeply involved that, before she knows it, she is taken prisoner. 

Now there is a patriarchal element to this novel that I find fascinating. The Doyles' are made immortal by becoming hosts for "The Gloom" a conscious mushroom network that has inhabited thier bodies, home, and minds for centuries. The Gloom controls the house and thier minds, but it is Howard Doyle, the patriarchal figure, who physically and spiritually controls his family. God-like in power, he has been ingesting these mushrooms for hundreds of years. So, to maintain his power, and in return for making his family immortal, they must give up thier lives, bodies, and offspring to him when necessary for the most henious reasons. 

Like a snake, he stays alive by sliding from body to body, consciousness to consciousness, and he cannot be stopped. Meanwhile, those he takes over are completely erased from existence or thier consciousness remains trapped in The Gloom. They become an echo... A phantom in the house they have lived and died in for the rest of time. All in the name of tradition and family. 

This is a great allegory of how family, tradition, and generational trauma can affect the living. Our bodies store memories from hundreds of years ago, and whether we know it or not, feel it or not, our family members have weaved their genetic memories into our bodies. We are a mycelium of memories. It is in our blood and stretches out to those joining our families and learning our customs. 

Of course, at least I hope, most of the time this is not in a creepy The Last of Us kind of way, but in a loving and grounding ancestral kind of way. I believe there is always more good than bad. However, regardless of patriarchal or matriarchal themes, this novel does an excellent job of illuminating the expectations children feel pressured to meet (in the most extreme way) to please/satiate a parental or authority figure. It's also an incredibly creepy and interesting way to examine the lengths families, even unrelated groups of people, will go to preserve a way of life. Even when it goes against everything they stand for morally and physically. 

I also wondered to myself, why mushrooms? Lately in popular culture we are seeing a rise of mushroom media, and although humankind has always had a certain reverence for them, this novel along with shows like The Last of Us call into question where this circulated fear of being taken over by mushrooms comes from. I don't have an answer for this, but it is a dynamic question to contemplate. 

Why do we fear being taken over by nature? Is it our physical minds we fear losing, or our autonomy in the abstract? Would we even notice it was happening, or would we find out too late like Noemi in Mexican Gothic? Could we escape even after we were captured? 

I don't know. But what I do know is if any of these themes strike your fancy check out this brilliant novel. It truly had me on the edge of my seat all night.

**If you are interested in this story, please note that it is a gothic novel and has many triggering themes surrounding gore, sexual content, and horror. Always do research before reading if you are unsure :) Stay safe out there. 

#dark academia #books & libraries #literature #words #books #mexican gothic #Silva Moreno-Garcia

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Hi! I adore your analyses.

If it isn't too much to ask, I would love to hear about your general approach to analyzing works. I wanna learn how to analyze things better from other people, and I really like the way you methodically break things down.

In other words, pls sensei teach me your ways HAHAHA

No trouble if you can't, though! Your blog is always a joy.

Have a wonderful day!

Sensei... 🫢

Ah, thank you, this is really flattering! I don't think I really do anything that special. Honestly, all it is was that I got misinterpreted a lot when I was younger and it made it difficult for me to express myself - so I ended up creating something of a system which I found seems to make things clear to others!

I can do a quick overview of it, for sure! I hope it helps! (It's under the cut :D)

Tip 1: Analyze things you love.

Look, this isn't school and I'm not a literary critic. I don't bother forcing myself to analyze things I'm just not feeling. Sometimes, I'll really enjoy something, but have nothing to say about it in particular. (Ex. Akutagawa. I adore him but for some reason don't feel compelled to analyze him as much... even though he's this blog's pfp...) That's not a commentary on the character/media nor my engagement with it. No need to analyze something you don't particularly care to - these write ups take a fair amount of time and effort, so you'll want to have enough raw energy at the start to sustain yourself. You should want to talk about it, is what I'm saying.

Tip 2: Understand the core themes of the story.

I cannot stress this enough! It's so important. The best stories will have their characters, plot arcs and settings all serve to enhance the major themes of the story in some way - figure out what these themes are, and keep them in the back of your mind. I think of themes like a filter - it should change the way you look at the story, and with any luck, draw a lot of seemingly loose threads together in interesting and surprising ways. There are typically about 2-3 major ones (Ex. BSD - living through uncertainty, good as a choice / Trigun - morality and autonomy, life after loss / Hatoful - love as salvation or corruption / there are other themes of course, these are just examples). From this point on, assume you have your "themes filter" active for completing the other tips.

Tip 3: Pick a small detail and think about "Why" and "How".

See, I used to go too big when doing analyses. I used to try and analyze everything there was to examine in one go, and it would become unwieldy and just have far too much information for me to juggle and process. So, it's better to start small. What's something that caught your attention? What was something you liked? Was there anything that confused you? Pick one thing... then ask yourself why and how. Why did I like this? Why did this character act in that way? How does this aspect of the story work? Etc. This will be your topic!

Tip 4: Read other people's thoughts.

I know we all hate going into tags and seeing some of the worst takes out there... so I don't actually do that. I only look through meta and theory tags, and most of those are done by people who put a lot of time and care into their theory crafting, so they at least usually bring the receipts. It always helps to read other's opinions. This is just a good thing in general - you need to open yourself up to different views. Even if you don't agree, you might be better able to articulate why you don't. There's some god-tier stuff in these theory tags, you just gotta look. :)

Tip 5: Pay attention to context and setting.

For most of the stories I analyze, the characters do not exist in a world or situation that is comparable to mine. Asking yourself "where did this character come from?" "what's the overall state of the world they inhabit?" "were this character's experiences different or similar to the rest of the cast? different or similar to their childhoods?" - this is really going to help you understand motivation, far more than core personality traits will alone. (Ex. remember that BSD is a newly post-war society. Tensions are still high. People are being hired at young ages. A lot of people grew up in the slums, and violence is common. How did the different characters interact with this world? What sides might one character have seen to this world that another didn't?)

Also, it's good to at least be somewhat aware of the author and the context they created their story in. Many of the works I analyze are from Japan. It's good to know where a work is from - typically you're going to see at least some expression of cultural values, and I find this is helpful to keep in mind. Some decisions made in story will make a lot more sense when you remember the story's place of origin.

Looking at author influences is also helpful! BSD has a great built-in source of background info, since the entire premise incorporates classic literature. This can be an excellent supplementary source!

Tip 6: Tell a story with your analysis.

Again, I'm doing this for fun. I'm not a literary academic, so I try to use conversational flow. I tend to write like I'm speaking - in fact, this is very much how I talk in real life. It's up to you the tone you set in your writing - just make it something that flows naturally. You can always go back and re-read it if something seems unclear.

What I mean by story is to break your analysis up into chunks. There's no hard and fast rule on how to do this. You can see a clear example of it in my "Dazai Likes People" post, which was long enough that I bolded the sections. It should have a beginning, middle, and end, roughly - beginning where you say what you want to analyze or lead into it somehow, middle (which I typically break up into individual topics), and the end, which honestly is just a rephrasing of the beginning (or sometimes I just leave it out). Sometimes, to break things up I'll add quotes or images that help me with my points; these serve as visual interest so the reader is not faced with a continuous wall of text. Bolding and italicizing key points can also do the trick.

A good way to see if the analysis flows is to see if you can say "so then..." between each paragraph. (Ex. Point 1 -> "so then..." -> Point 2 -> "so then..." -> Point 3, etc.) Each point should flow into the next - I try to make something of a narrative out of it. (It's why the word "so" pops up a lot in my analyses haha.) I'm sorry, I feel like this is the part that's the hardest to explain in a way that's easy to follow. It's mostly practice, really. It's also subjective how you want your analysis to read.

Tip 7: Fact check!

I hate spreading misinformation. Mostly because it's frustrating to have constructed a theory only to get called out that it's based on something misremembered, but also because, as a science student, I'm really mindful of keeping track of my sources. Always have your sources on hand! I spend at least three re-reads of my analyses consulting books, episodes, and manga to ensure that everything I've added is correct. (I might go a bit overboard with it sometimes... I can be a bit paranoid about this...)

And finally, my Golden Rule: ✨Explanation, not Justification!✨

If you have no other takeaway from this post, please remember this! Every character in the story should have their actions be explainable! This does not mean justifiable! Explanation is not just logic, and should always take into account character values, emotions, and situation. This will help prevent analyzing characters only from the perspective of relatability, and is very useful when analyzing antagonists/villains.

Character analysis is always about drawing a throughline between motivation and action. It's not about whether you would do the same, or whether you agree, or whether it is a choice you would forgive.

Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do. This is true in fiction, and it's also true in real life. I try to always keep this in mind.

I hope this was helpful to you, or to anyone who might want to read it!

#what do i tag this as...? #analysis writing reference #thanks for the ask! #storyrambles #thank you again!!!

[dmitrimolotov]

Bound to a Rock and an Eagle - 8

Chapter  8

No. 8: Everything hurts and I’m dying

Stomach pain | Head trauma | Back from the dead

1 | prev | Read on AO3  

There were several pages of handwritten notes in neat cursive script on lined paper with a pre-ruled margin. Initially Victor was impressed, the creature had more legible handwriting than him, even without the shaking, which he was glad to see had greatly subsided. Victor grabbed another medicated lozenge and popped it into his mouth as he perched on the edge of his bench and began to read.

 To the man who stole a gift from the gods, only to throw it away.

My creator, Frankenstein, I have written you an account of the most relevant parts of my short life so you can understand the trials I have faced. Perhaps this will make you better sympathise with my humble desires.

When an infant is born into this world, they are born not knowing, we are unable to recall the day of our birth because we do not yet understand how to process the world around us and make memories of that day. But the same is not true for me.

I remember the moment of my animation, and, more than that, I remember the agony of all your terminated trials as you practiced and refined the process. Knowing life for a moment, life without a complete body to inhabit is an excruciating experience – pray you never have to suffer it – but then to return to death the next, only to be pulled once more from oblivion so you could test my raw nerves, my responsiveness… Often I have had nightmares of these moments, such are horrors I feel I could never fully describe.

Despite this, I don’t remember what it was like to be dead, and I imagine I won’t know when I am again either. I do not fear it, and that is freeing.

I was alive before, I think. Whatever human brain or parts you chose for me clings to some residual activity that now and then longs for things I don’t understand the reason for. It helped me, I think, to learn speech and writing, as I am now quite fluent. It was less like learning and more like remembering something long forgotten. Like riding a bike, as you might put it. That part of me does not want to die again and it is also what drives me onwards.

I recall waking in this very spot on a night not dissimilar to tonight. The air was heavy with electricity as it usually was when I was brought to wake in your lab. I recall wondering how long my life would be this time and then the sudden realisation that I had more than the usual faculties about me. I could see and hear, and I now had a complete body that I was thrilled to learn I had autonomy over. I remember the joy of flexing my muscles for the first time, the alarm at realising I was restrained, but the ease with which I broke free made me giddy. I think it was at that time that you fled the house. The initial excitement you showed rapidly gave way to apprehension, disgust, then soon, fear. Once I freed myself and found my legs, I tried to follow you – although I did not yet know how to speak, I instinctively questioned my being and believed you, as the lone person responsible for my life, would have answers for me. Alas, you were gone, and I did not yet have the awareness of my surroundings to find my way back, instead wandering in the cold and stormy night alone. I was fortunate to have taken a single belonging of yours as I left the house that night – your coat that I had found hanging by the door. I wrapped it around myself to shield from the cold wind, and later, I would find inside a ticket with your name and place of residence so that I may one day make my way back here.

Finding the city streets and buildings overwhelming, I kept walking until I came to the forest, where I stayed, living off the land and equipment leftover by campers or hikers. As the weather got colder, I grew bolder, and started stealing packs for food and warm clothes or sleeping bags. This was how I came into possession of the most wonderous device I had seen. I had often seen people looking at these slabs, sometimes for hours at a time, sometimes they made noise and sometimes they spoke into them. And now I had one of my own. I was again fortunate that the hiker had no lock or passcode set, so I was able to access videos and music and teach myself about the world. I learned fast, but the battery life of the phone was limited and soon I found myself looking at a blank screen again. But I had gotten a taste and I was determined to find more. I was torn between retaining my anonymity and revealing myself to the campers. The first encounter I had, well, it did not go well. A man camping alone had drank through several bottles of strong-smelling liquid, I would later identify as alcohol. I approached him with the intention of asking him for food and to share his fire, but much like your response, the man reacted with similar horror and disdain upon seeing me. In his fear, he lashed out, and out of rejection, I retreated. I was hurt that the humans I had interacted with had shunned me simply for how I appeared to them without further thought or reason. I was determined to prove I could win someone over though, if just one person would listen to my tale, then I could find a place of acceptance. So I continued to learn, practice my language skills, stealing phones and laptops wherever I could, as well as books and I was even lucky enough to find a radio, which lasted considerably longer than the phones.  

And so, I learned. And every so often I would reveal myself to a human – I was careful to ensure they were alone, I tried approaching them unseen and reasoning with them, but it almost always ended the same way. Until one day, in my frustration, I let my rage loose on the person. I struck him with my fists, and I grasped his neck, and I squeezed the very life from him with my own fingers. And it felt good. I felt powerful.

I felt not like Adam at the will of his creator, but like a god myself, with authority over life and death.

What god would punish me, when I was not bound by the same laws as you and yours. If I was made not by the same laws of nature, then why should I be bound by them?

I killed again. And again.

But it did nothing to fill the absence in my heart.

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?

No.

But even Adam had his Eve.

You have your Henry.

And yet I remain lonely.

The humans who know of my existence either fear me or seek to do me harm. Their anger and hatred are misdirected at me – the vitriol in their heart is intended for you. So perhaps, with my arrival here, you shall soon receive it.

 I never knew my name, if I ever had one. I should think myself Adam, but I relate more to Lucifer. Perhaps better fitting still, is Lazarus.

~ Until we meet again, Frankenstein.

 Victor reread the letter before passing it to Henry an Elizabeth, but as he was about to hand it over, he suddenly noticed that the paper was torn along one edge, as if ripped from a notebook. Victor snatched it back before Elizabeth had a chance to take it and squinted at the margin. He was able to make out an impression of a date and some of the shorthand notations he used when taking notes. The paper had been torn from his lab book. A surge of panic ran through him as he pulled open the draw where he normally kept his notes. They were all gone. The creature had taken all of it, and now effectively, possessed the only existing description of how to restore life. Victor handed the letter over and slumped backwards where he sat, now laying flat on his back on his workbench, staring at the ceiling, turning the creature’s words over in his mind.

Henry and Elizabeth read the letter quickly and quietly together.

“Victor,” Elizabeth started quietly after a moment, “A question I probably should have asked earlier: what did you make this creature out of?”

Victor grimaced. “Parts… mostly human, some synthetic, some things I built from scratch,” he rasped.

“Oh god Victor, human parts? That is incredibly illegal. And dangerous. How were you not caught? How were you not fired?”

He shrugged, still laying on the bench. “Lucky.”

“And reckless,” Henry added.

Victor couldn’t argue with that. His gut twisted at the realisation that although this was bigger than him, bigger than any of them, he could still face the very real and human consequence of going to prison for defiling human remains.

“Ok, a couple of things I’m getting from this,” Henry said after reading it all the way through and thankfully derailing Victor’s anxious spiral. “Firstly, it sounds from this like there are more victims we don’t know about or haven’t been attributed to the ‘Ingolstadt Bigfoot’ – what they’ve been calling him-” he explained to Elizabeth- “Secondly, and probably fairly obviously: Victor, you’ve not just made life, you’ve made intelligent life. No joke, he could rival some of the students I’ve had classes with!” Henry flipped through the pages and jabbed his finger into a line. “Here. ‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?’ That’s Milton. That’s Paradise Lost.” Henry pointed out.

“He’s read Paradise Lost?” Elizabeth asked incredulously. 

Henry smirked, “He learned from the internet, the classics are in the public domain. Can see why it would’ve piqued his interest though.”

“And explains a lot of his religious imagery,” Elizabeth added.

“Also!” Henry continued, sounding more excited than anxious now that he had something tangible to analyse, “The meme is true!”

Both Elizabeth and Victor looked at his quizzically.

“‘The Ingolstadt Bigfoot stole my iPhone14!’ You can’t tell me you never saw it, Victor?”

Victor shook his head; it hadn’t come up – highlighting another hole in his research. How much had he missed?

Clerval continued, “It went around the campus forums just in the last week or so after some first year claimed he’d been robbed by the creature and that’s why he didn’t have the new iPhone. It was hilarious.”

Elizabeth laughed, but Victor just chewed his lip before sitting up again.

“Ok, but one more thing,” Victor said hoarsely, his voice starting to return slightly. “‘The humans who know of my existence… perhaps, with my arrival here, you shall soon receive it.’ What do you suppose that means?”

 There was a knock at the door.

next

#whumptober2022 #no.8 #back from the dead #Frankenstein #fic #religious imagery #molotov cocktales

[apothecarinomicon]

Spring week 1 part 2

It was, in fact, someone looking for my help. Aidan Bankhead, one of the bakers in town (so he introduced himself), stood there practically filling up the doorframe.

He asked me if I was the new witch and I said I supposed I was. He looked me over and seemed to approve. He held up his thumb, showing me that there was a screw sticking out of it. I told him a puncture wound was more the domain of a surgeon, but he shook his head and asked if he could come in.

I hadn’t made it all the way through my “yes” before he was in the door. The instant he made it to the center of the room, the copper alembic zipped from its place on the shelf to slam against his thumb. He winced. It stayed stuck there. Magnetic thumb, he told me. A hereditary disorder, and particularly inconvenient for baking. Not curable, but it only crops up every few months and when it does there’s a tincture that can help. He said the old witch (that’s what he called her, “the old witch”) used to make it for him, though he’s not sure what exactly went into it.

I mentioned that I didn’t think copper magnetized, and he said that pure copper was probably too soft to hold the shape of the apparatus in its pure form and that the alembic was likely made of an alloy—though not in those exact words. Said he’d picked that tidbit up from his best friend, the father of the mining family.

I told him I hadn’t cured any cases of magnetic thumb before, but I had heard of it, and I knew the basic mechanisms. I told him it would be easy enough to recreate my predecessor’s tincture by combining our notes, and that I would let him know when it was done.

It was clear that he hadn’t expected any kind of significant wait, but I knew I’d need time to collect the reagents. So, I told him to feel free to use the stream or the latrine to clean his wound, and lent him the first aid kit I’d brought with me. I figured that would buy me some time.

I got to work immediately, cross-referencing my predecessor’s notes on the environment surrounding Greenmoor with my own knowledge base about which substances cure which symptoms, and in what environments they were likely to be found. More quickly than I expected, I had my shopping list.

I decided to make my way to Moonbreaker Mountain first, both because one of my ingredients was likely there, and because according to my predecessor’s notes there’s a direct (albeit circuitous) route from there to the other place I’ll be needing to go, that isn’t as easy to traverse the other way around.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

It is a strange mountain, mostly due to the land surrounding it. As far as I understand, mountains are typically surrounded by foothills, the land creasing higher and higher until it finally reaches its peak. Furthermore, mountains rarely stand alone: they come in twos or threes in lines or clusters, all formed together. Moonbreaker Mountain has neither of these features. It stands alone, shooting up abruptly from flat ground to a peak past the clouds. Fortunately, I shouldn’t need to climb that far up today.

It occurred to me as I began to scale the side (two feet and one hand on the ground at all times) that with a landscape like this, I might be able to make the best of a bad situation. After all, isn’t mountain climbing an adventure? It certainly felt like adventure, or at least close enough.

I was pulled from my thoughts when I tripped over a rock and almost went skittering back down the path before I managed to find my footing. Only after I’d stopped did it occur to me that as my foot struck it the rock had sounded hollow. I carefully picked my way back up to it for a closer look.

As it turned out, it wasn't a rock at all, but what looked to be a large metal boot (well, larger than mine, at least—although that’s not difficult to achieve). The top of it was buried in a large tangle of vines that coated a much larger form, maybe twice as big as me.

Well, if this wasn’t something presenting itself I didn’t know what was.

When cleared away, the vines revealed a vaguely humanoid form—it had clear arms and legs, though its torso was just a rough cylinder, it had no neck, and the head was a strange shape with only the barest hint of facial features. It was made almost entirely out of stone, though below the knees and past the elbows it transitioned to rusted metal. Running the entire length and circumference of the torso were carved runes. They weren’t the ones I’d have used, but their purpose was clear nonetheless: among them were instructions for life, for consciousness, for autonomy. This was a stone golem, abandoned here and left to the elements.

And it had certainly been dutiful in offering itself up to the cold and rain. Its limbs were rusted, its movement sluggish even once freed from the tangle of plants. It could be of real use around the cottage, but it’d need repairs first.

My gut murmured something to me, and I deemed it worth a try.

I leaned in and whispered to the golem, gently, since it likely hadn’t heard anyone speak in quite a while. I told it that I could repair it (I didn’t actually know how, but left that small stumbling block for later), but that I didn’t have the materials I’d need with me.

I asked if it had enough energy to make it home.

It didn’t move at first. I almost gave up, resigning myself to lugging a bag of anything that might help up the mountain at some later date. Then sluggishly, clumsily, it stood. It looked at me for a moment and I wondered what it was thinking. Then, it began to walk slowly down the slope in the direction of the village.

Among the tangle of vines that had covered the golem, I found exactly what I was looking for: hiker’s helper. Its leaves can be boiled into a tincture that helps with pain. How serendipitous.

I plucked a handful of leaves from the vine and headed on my way.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

When I reached the bottom of the mountain—a different part than I’d climbed up, closer to Meltwater Loch, where I was headed—I came across a small rest stop. It seemed designed for adventurers, with raised platforms for tents (I assume a particularly bad rain could easily cause torrents to rush down the mountain), a pump, a latrine, and complementary bear bags. There was a family sitting by an empty fire pit—a man, a woman, a son, and a daughter. They were absolutely grimy, covered in dust and soot. I wasn’t really interested in talking, but the woman spotted me before I could slink away and called me over.

She was Crystal. He was Angus. The teenagers didn’t introduce themselves. She asked if I was the new witch, and I asked how she guessed. She said it was just a hunch at the same time that he said that no one who wasn’t a witch would choose to dress the way I was. She swatted him on the arm.

I suppose I’ll have to visit the tailor in town.

They are the family responsible for mining the raw materials used in the town’s industry—all four of them share the work among them every morning, and return home around noon. They typically go mining in Hero’s Hollow, but there was currently a party of adventurers in there and working around adventurers is inconvenient. The resources aren’t nearly as rich in the caves under Moonbreaker Mountain, but it’s something at least.

Crystal asked me where I was headed, and I told her Meltwater Loch. I was going to see if I could find any slime shells, whose secretions help with ailments of the blood. Angus, half joking, told me to be careful out there, that there’s a pack of cù-sìth (magical hounds) that like to hunt in the loch. I laughed and told him cù-sìth aren’t real. Neither he nor Crystal responded to this.

I asked them how they deal with the threats in Hero’s Hollow—it is a dungeon, after all. Angus said dungeons aren’t as bad as everyone makes them out to be. Most of the inhabitants are perfectly reasonable, so long as you know how to interact with them. That’s not a perspective I’d ever encountered before. I wonder if it’s worth further consideration.

At this point, their daughter told me to catch (the first thing she’d said) and tossed me a glass vial. Reckless of her—I’m visibly not athletic—but miraculously I actually caught it before it shattered on the ground. I held it up to the light, not believing what I was seeing. At my questioning look, she confirmed it was vampire venom. She said she found it that morning, and after learning I was a witch she figured I’d have more use for it than she would. I told her I would certainly find one and tucked it carefully into my satchel next to the leaves.

We sat and I chatted with the parents a bit longer before I had to be on my way.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

Meltwater Loch was more beautiful than I’d anticipated. I don’t know why I expected it to be more of a swamp. My predecessor’s notes specified that there was a bog somewhere around as well—I suppose I just thought the loch would be part of it.

I wandered along the edge for a bit, combing the crystalline waters for any small mollusks that could be what I sought. After about fifteen minutes of this, I heard a single bark echo out from the trees behind me.

No fucking way.

I froze, listening intently, racking my brain for all I could remember of the myths surrounding the cù-sìth: huge dogs, the size of a small cow; solitary hunters; shaggy green coats…

Then, I remembered the most chilling part. When hunting, the cù-sìth barks thrice, and only thrice. And if it’s prey hasn’t reached safety by the third…

A second bark rang out over the loch.

Frantically, I scanned my surroundings for anything that could help me. The only cover I could see was the trees behind me, and that was where the barking was.

Looking down at the water, I spotted a patch of what looked like seaweed, with just the very tops poking out of the water. I knew that plant. As loath as I was to get my clothing wet, it seemed I didn’t have a choice.

Quickly, I waded into the water and hunkered down until only the top half of my head was poking out over the surface. I held my satchel above my head to keep it dry, and that combined with the surrounding weeds obscured me almost entirely.

Just as I thought, the air within the patch smelled especially clean. This was a species called gas weed, known for expelling excessive amounts of oxygen. Hopefully it would dilute my scent enough.

I waited there for around ten minutes, and no third bark rang out. With a sigh of relief, I stood.

Wading back out of the loch, I stepped on what felt like a particularly rough stone. Looking down, I found it was a slime shell. At least I’d be able to get back to the cottage and change, I thought as I reached down and snagged it.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

The quickest route back led me directly through the village. I tried to keep my head down, embarrassed at my unkempt state, certain everyone was staring at me. If I could just get back to the cottage, then I could change and maybe bathe and feel alright again.

That’s when someone called out to me.

I debated just ignoring him but no, I’d been instructed to be sociable. So, I turned and walked towards the voice.

It came from one of two men sitting at a wicker table outside the bakery. He introduced himself as Evander Bankhead—Aidan’s husband and co-owner of the bakery. His friend was Gowan Leckie, the local blacksmith.

Evander said he just wanted to thank me for taking care of his husband, and asked how he was doing. I said I’d been out gathering reagents, but I doubted he could have gotten into too much trouble at the cottage. Evander chuckled and said he wouldn’t put it past Aidan to fabricate a bind for himself all on his own.

He made small talk and I’ll admit I was a bit checked out. I was cold and uncomfortable and tired and not too focused on first impressions. At the end of it he thanked me again and insisted I take some bread and a songberry, as a tangible expression of his gratitude.

It’s only just occurred to me that songberries are used in potions meant to improve mood. I wonder if that was intentional.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

When I got back to the cottage, here is what I did:

First, I built a little fire in the fireplace.

Then, I filled the small cauldron with water and dropped the hiker’s helper leaves in and set the whole thing over the fire.

I let it boil until the pigmentation of the leaves had leached into the water and the whole thing was a dark green color. Then, I took it off the heat.

Next, I convinced the slime shell to open up just a bit so its slime could drop into the mixture (I must remember to return the mollusk itself to its natural habitat next time I’m there—I’ve left it in a small pool near the river for the time being).

Finally, I briskly stirred the whole thing until it turned a royal blue color, which I supposed meant it was ready.

It was at this point that I realized I didn’t have any cups or bottles or any kitchenware, for that matter. What an oversight.

I went outside to find Aidan, and I located him (copper implement still stuck to his thumb) examining what at first appeared to be a large pile of rocks. As I got closer, I realized with a sense of both pride and uncanny surprise that it was in fact the stone golem, having made its way here from the mountain, and now sitting inactive in the middle of the cottage’s backyard. Maybe there actually was something to this ‘listen to your gut’ business.

Aidan asked me if the golem was mine and I said I didn’t think it was yet, that it needed repairs and I wasn’t sure how to go about that. He recommended that I speak to his friend Gowan (who I realized I’d already met—he had been the one sitting with Evander), and I said I just might do that.

I asked him where I might find a cup and he produced a wooden one from the satchel at his side. He said my predecessor always made her patients bring their own.

Well, that solved the immediate problem I supposed, though I made a mental note to see if I could find some kitchen implements of my own in town.

As I carefully poured the potion from my cauldron into his cup, Aidan asked me what it was called. At my questioning noise, he told me my predecessor always named her concoctions—the easier to tell them apart. Thinking back on it, I realized Edith had done the same thing. I suppose it just never occurred to me.

On impulse, I told Aidan it would be called Bankhead’s Brew, after him. He seemed flattered.

As soon as he took a sip, the copper alembic fell with a thunk into the grass. That was as strong proof of its efficacy as any.

Aidan thanked me, paid me 20 silver, told me again to get Gowan to look at the golem (and I told him again to seek medical attention for the screw embedded in his thumb), and went on his way.

And just like that, I had treated my very first patient.

I immediately set out for the river to collect water for a bath.

⇦●〇●⇨

#writing #writers on tumblr #writeblr #original writing #fantasy #apothecaria #entry #amwriting #creative writing #fiction #rpg #roleplaying game #high rannoc #writeblr community #writers #writblr

[js116]

Silent Planet’s Everything Was Sound

22 May 2021

A wee bit of background before we get to the main event:

Silent Planet is an American post-rock metalcore band from California headed by retired psychologist/therapist Garrett Russell, and Everything Was Sound is their second studio album. Released in 2016, this concept album did nothing short of blow my mind; the total runtime is 41 minutes, but it took me a couple hours to write out everything I picked up from each song. 

Everything Was Sound has thirteen tracks, standard, so that is the album I listened to for this review! For the purpose of sticking with the album’s story concept, I’ll be adding my standout lyric quotes with the description of the song, rather than sticking them at the end. 

- I want to post a warning before I get into this album: this one covers topics some may view as disturbing. There are mentions of death, suicide, war, several mental disorders including depression and eating disorders), politics, and generally dark themes. This is where you should stop reading if any of these will bother you. -

The concept for this album revolves around the idea of the “panopticon,” which describes a circular prison surrounding a central guard tower. There are bright lights shining down from the tower so that the prisoners cannot see into the tower, where they are told there are guards watching them constantly. The prisoners are isolated from the guards and each other, being unable to see into the tower or other cells due to the walls and the lights. This setup removes the autonomy of the prisoners, and the paranoia that the guards are constantly watching (whether there are truly guards in the tower or not) removes the will to try to escape or act out. 

This concept is introduced in the first track of the album, Inherit the Earth. This first song begins by referencing the events of the previous album’s last track (Depths II from album The Night God Slept, in which the viewer has a vivid vision in the forest before falling asleep) as having happened only a few hours before, and now the viewer is waking up in the woods to find it is starting to rain. The viewer (us) stumbles through the rain and the forest under they find a structure: the panopticon. They enter the prison to escape the weather, and so we are pulled into the story of the album -- a metaphor for the human condition. 

“We inherit the earth, we inherit the war / I inhabit the wound, I dwell in the harm / Oh how far we fall: We’re casualties of time / Oh how far we fall: Forgive existence.”

The second track, Psychescape, (and each subsequent song, except the last one) introduces us to the contents of one of the cells: Schizophrenia. The theme of this song is paranoia and delusion, and the tower’s lights and watching guards are revealed to us; there are two distinct, conflicting voices. 

“I waited on the tracks of reason / But my train of thought never came / It never came.”

“Scrawled across the walls the suffering saint cries out: / ‘Is it madness to retreat from the myopic gaze that holds us captive?’”

Dying In Circles, the third track and second cell, holds the prisoner Organized Religion. Heavily rooted in Biblical principles, I was surprised to find this track used those principles to highlight and call out the hypocrisy of the modern church; the gatekeeping, neglect of those in need, the isolation of outsiders. Silent Planet calls on systematic religion (particularly modern Christianity) to return to its original purpose: to care for others, rather than turn them away or determine their worth as an organization. They are charged with trading their religious superiority for the awe and compassion for humanity they once had; to return to being a religion about the life of God, rather than being solely about his death. I really do love the idea of the “Image of God” being represented by a homeless person sleeping on church steps. 

“Beside the shadow of a frozen chapel / Under the marriage of cross and crown / Outside the privilege of the ‘chosen ones’ / The Image of God is sleeping on the ground.”

“We are the eulogy at the funeral of God.”

“Trade your certainty for awe.”

The fourth track took me for a spin, personally, as I’ve encountered the prisoner described here myself. Understanding Love as Loss opens with a few brief lyrics outlining the suicides of writers Sylvia Plath (“Searching for solace in a toxic temple--” death by toxic inhalation), Earnest Hemingway (“Fragments of lead climbing through your head--” death by shotgun to the skull), Virginia Woolf (“Stones load your coat as you wade through the winter current / Dancing with the dead on the riverbed--” death by drowning), and David Foster Wallace (“Wanton hanging of the wise pale king.” death by hanging). 

The line immediately following the deaths of these writers stuck out to me, as a fellow writer who has struggled with depression: “And I see myself.”

The title of the song explains that love is sacrifice; you lose a piece of yourself when you love someone else. Lose that piece, Silent Planet urges in this song; lose that piece to another person instead of losing yourself to your suffering. 

Lead vocalist Garrett Russell: “[Sometimes with depression,] the world feels like there’s no color. Even if you can’t see the color, be bold enough to ask someone to describe the colors of the world to you.”

This song was my favorite this far into the album, for its bare, unflinching honesty on the subject. The footnotes for this song in the album booklet include the number for the National Suicide Hotline. I respect that. 

The fifth track, Tout Comprendre, draws its title from the first half of a French quote, and translates loosely to “To Understand All.” This song is an interlude, meaning it does not contain any lyrics, and it is the first of two interludes on the set. 

Immediately following Tout Comprendre comes Panic Room, a track that tells the story of a veteran who has come home, but is mentally haunted by the war. The lyrics take us to bloody battlefields in desert sands, and lay out the plague of terror-memories. Panic Room’s prisoner is PTSD, and it delves into the American treatment of returned veterans and their struggles with armed-conflict trauma. 

“Praise me for my valor, lay me in a crimson tower / Justify my endless terror as my ‘finest hour’ / Treat me as a token to deceive the child / Whom we fatten for this scapegoat slaughter / I learned to fight, I learned to kill, I learned to steal / I learned that none of this is real, none of this is real / None of this is real, NONE OF THIS IS REAL”

Just after this verse, there is a brief, almost total silence, before the song resumes. There are several breaks like this in the music; periods of calm between the intense music. 

We move on to the fifth cell and seventh track, REDIVIDER. This song threw me off at first; I thought the words were being reused and rearranged before I realized the song is a palindrome. About halfway through, the lyrics flip to mirror the first half of the song. 

“Death ran away then life flooded in world / This I am: Imbalance, beautifully so / Hands connected, perhaps… / Then dead reflections saw you / I did, didn’t I? / I didn’t, did I? / You saw reflections dead then / Perhaps, connected hands… / So beautifully imbalance: Am I this world? / In flooded life then away ran Death.” 

The fifth prisoner is Bipolar Disorder. 

Nervosa is the name of the eighth track; this one disturbed me the most out of all of them. My first impression of this song was, if you’ll excuse my Irish here, “Holy sh*t.” None of the imagery prior to this song was nearly as vivid and disturbing as it was here. The clean vocals (singing instead of metal-screaming) are very well done, capturing the desperation of the situation in a very raw way, which is fitting for the theme of the song -- this cell’s prisoner is the deadliest of psychiatric disorders, bulimia nervosa. The entirety of the lyrics are well-written (although, again, vividly disturbing), so I chose the most poignant of them.

“I am not my own reflection / I am not myself, I am not myself / I am haunted by a non-existent lover / The spectre, the ghost, the self-starving host / I am haunted by a non-existent lover / I was gifted with the vision but cursed to be the witness.”

This song, too, contains links to help services for eating disorders in the footnotes of the album booklet. 

We come now to the second interlude, C’est Tout Pardonner, titled after the second half of the French quote, the entirety of which translates to “To understand all is to forgive all.” The prisoner held in the two of these is ignorance. 

Just as C’est is the second, contrasting half of Tout, which was followed by war-themed Panic Room, so Orphan, the second, contrasting half of Panic Room, follows C’est. 

Orphan relays the perspective of orphans of war, the prisoners of this track. Particularly focusing on crimes against peaceful civilians (especially in the Middle East), Orphan also describes the reunion of two brothers on opposite sides of war. 

“I’m finding the violence -- it looks like me.”

“Terrified little son, encumbered by your sword / You can hide your fear, but won’t shed the weight of your humanity -- Humanity / You can face me toward the mountains / Where I meet our mother’s gaze / Too blinded by this hatred / To recognize your brother’s face.”

The eleventh track, No Place to Breathe, was both ahead of its time and should not have had to be written in the first place. The prisoner in this eighth cell is fascism, specifically within enforcers of the law. It dives into how easy it is to turn a blind eye to issues like systematic racism, police brutality, and inherent injustice, if these things do not affect us personally. There are three murder victims, (Eric Garner [2014], Hernan Jaramillo [2013], and Kelly Thomas [2011]) all killed by police, whose last recorded words are attributed in the song: “I can’t breathe.” 

Does that sound familiar from more recent news? This album was released in 2016, to give some perspective on how things have changed. 

“We shout at fascists, hands fixed on asphyxiating those in need / Place your hands to the pulse of this city / Keep your ear to the ground / Hear him gasp, / ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.’”

The ninth and final cell is explored in the twelfth track, First Father (which is the partner of a song called First Mother from their previous album). The final prisoner is the grief over losing a loved one. Switching between a rushing, loud tempo and a low-toned quiet of guitars and vocals, the song captures the process of moving forward through personal loss. 

“‘You pulled me through time,’ through the edgeless night / I’ll learn to love as you learned to die / I’ll begin to feel again and finish the chapter you couldn’t write / Candles in the dark, defiant to the night / Defiant to the shadow / You pull me through time, through the edgeless night / I learned to love as you learned to die.”

With the thirteenth and final song, we’ve literally come full circle and are finally at the prison’s central tower, where we discover we are the guard watching the prisoners. Titled after a line from the first track’s lyrics (”We inherit the earth[...] We inhabit the wound”), Inhabit the Wound tears down the guard tower, freeing the prisoners from the confines of their situation or disorder. Each of the nine prisoners reaches into themselves and retrieves a seed, which is planted in the place of the tower. The album closes with this image:

“The earth, with a final gasp, shook free from our inventions. Grace and nature reconciled as I heard ‘it is finished.’ The final seal was broken, the concussion blew me back -- I teetered on the edge of re-creation and the wrath. The nine lovers stumbled out of their shells of brokenness, they reached inside their wounds to find the seeds borne from their suffering. Coalesce upon me to plant the tree of life inside the heart of the machine. Reach inside -- heal the wound -- make us whole.”

I found this album to be an absolute masterpiece, and metal isn’t usually a preferred genre of mine. I’ve got to give this one five out of five symbolic and vivid frogs. Well done, Silent Planet, both in composition and in raising awareness about different types of struggle.

Next week I’ll be reviewing an album that was recommended to me, and that was released today: Twenty One Pilots’ Scaled and Icy.

Thanks for listening with me!

#silent planet #everything was sound #metalcore #post-rock #concept album #album review #5/5 frogs

[ficsandcatsandficsandcats]

Could you do an imagine where the reader is blind but has empathic like abilities and it’s takes Jaskier some time to realize that she can be independent but still needs him? Sorry if this sounds confusing. I’m hoping for some fluff between them

Fandom: The WitcherPairing: Jaskier x ReaderWord Count: 916Rating: TTaglist: @heroics-and-heartbreak @whatevermonkey @mynamesoundslikesherlock @magic-multicolored-miracle @writingstudent @mlleecrivaine @coffee-and-stories @ultracolorfulnerdcollection @astouract@your-not-invisible-to-me @kemmastan a/n: I hope I was able to do this prompt justice. Let me know how you liked it! Thanks!

Jaskier was a wonderful boyfriend. He was funny and charming and kind and romantic and also, if you were being totally honest, sometimes a huge pain in your ass. He meant well, of course he did, he always did. But meaning well didn’t mean anything if you kept stamping all over the boundaries your partner set as he did, wittingly or no. He knew from the start that you were blind and had been from birth and when you were friends it seemed like this wouldn’t be a problem. You were independent, using the skills you’d learned to maneuver through the world with relative ease. He treated you like anyone else, not trying to take your arm to guide you around like some people did (as though being blind meant you gave up all sense of autonomy or that strangers had the right to touch you). He never tried to talk for you, trusting that you knew when you were being spoken to which you did, thank you very much. He was fascinated by your abilities as an empath and the way it helped you with your work as a healer. But when your relationship transitioned from friendship to romance, something changed.

Suddenly he began to fret over things that hadn’t occurred to him before, like how many steps let up to your home or how long the walk was to your work and whether or not it was a safe route. You’d tried to patiently field these complaints but there were always more. The day you finally decided to put your foot down was when he began to make noise about your job.

“I just worry that healing is too taxing for you, what with your empathy and all,” he said. Your shoulders tensed and you turned around to face him so he could see your scowling expression.

“Julian, dearest…”

“Oh no,” Jaskier said, recognizing the tone, the formal name, and the endearment as nothing good. He was not wrong.

“Julian, would you please explain to me what you think my job should be?” you asked. It was a test and he knew this and yet, bless him, he tried.

“Well one that involves fewer heightened emotions!” he said. You let the silence lapse between you to emphasize the stupidity of that statement, especially as Jaskier tried to think of a single job where there wouldn’t be some level of emotions and failed.

“Feeling emotions, being emotive, is not a weakness, Jaskier. It is a strength. One of my many strengths,” you emphasized.

“Y/N I know you are strong,” he insisted, “But-”

“But I suddenly don’t know how to take care of myself or more or live in the world I’ve inhabited successfully long before you entered it. Jaskier I know you wish to take care of me, that it’s how you show your love for people, but I need you to understand that you can either accept me and be in my life as it is or you can get out. I love you and I don’t want to lose you but I will not be made a prisoner of your affection.”

Your words hung in the air for a moment and you began to fear the stillness. You knew Jaskier was still there and you could feel an overwhelming sense of anxiety, and a bit of guilt as well.

“Y/N I have been an ass,” he said. You didn’t contradict him, just waited to hear what else he had to say.

“Of course I trust you and of course I want to be in your life. You’re right, I’ve been overstepping and it isn’t fair to you. I just… I’m so scared all of the time. About everyone, not just you. If it wasn’t that you were blind it would only be something else. I hate that I leave you and I hate that if I stay I leave Geralt. I feel like I’m always saying goodbye to someone, scared for someone, and it doesn’t make it ok for me to disregard your wishes or treat you like a child but it’s just… a lot. But I’m sorry and I will do better,” he vowed, moving closer to you. You pulled him into a wrap, wrapping your arms around him tight and exhaling deeply into his chest.

“I love you too,” you said, “And I know it is hard to say goodbye. I worry about you when you’re gone but I also know that you’re as safe as you would be anywhere else thanks to Geralt. And I know it makes you happy.”

“You make me happy,” he insisted.

“But so do other things, and that’s good! It should be that way. We can’t be each other’s whole lives, that’s too much to put on a person. But you are the very best part of mine and that is true whether you’re here or off roaming the land, using your gifts to brighten other people’s lives,” you said. Jaskier leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to your lips.

“You are the best part of my life too,” he whispered, “And I promise to trust you with yours.”

“That’s all I ask,” you murmured, “That and that thing you did last night with your thumbs.”

He chuckled into your lips as he pulled you in for another kiss that was a bit deeper and then scooped you up in his arms, walking you back towards your bed to give you what you asked.

#Anonymous #jaskier x reader #jaskier imagines #jaskier fluff #drabble

[be-ca-lm]

one cult to another?

i see a lot of tumblrs in the ex-cult/ex-religious community who have an “alternative” gender identity and i just want to say, i get it. we were raised incredibly repressed, very pressured to comply with the norm and the standards, to conform to a homogeneous hetero-normative lifestyle and adhere to the expectations and roles that went along with that. so ANY deviation from those standards was disorienting and called one’s very identity into question.

i think for some it is a trauma response. i hated being born female, but i never had dysphoria or considered that i was trans. my internalized misogyny came directly from my cult brainwashing that women were inferior. i’m also bisexual and didn’t allow that to even become part of “who I was” for years because it was shameful/bad/dirty. so i got the homophobic misogynistic mindset at odds within who i really was and that caused immense agony and internal strife until i walked away from those dogmatic, controlling views.

i get it. i think it’s good to explore and it’s normal after your whole worldview is ripped away to start asking deep questions like, am i even straight? am i comfortable in the body i was born in apart from the toxic gender roles that i was never able to separate from the essence of inhabiting my physical body? am i comfortable with existing as a sexual being? do i feel acquainted with my sexuality? am i a woman? am i a man? what does that look like now that i’ve taken g*d out of the implications of those labels? 

i want to gently say. it is easy to leave one cult and fall into another. those of us who are gender critical sometimes refer to trans ideology as cult-like or the cult of gender. that’s because there ARE some very concerning attributes about the positions we see being taken - villainizing those who disagree denying basic human decency to those you decide are on the “wrong” side, threatening people who hold certain ideologies and philosophies with actual physical violence, and demanding that other people conform to your standards, use your language, and basically worship the ideals/heroes that you say to. it is closed-minded and dangerous, but i see why deconverts are attracted to these communities. they preach love and acceptance, you can explore your identity, you suddenly have access to all these lovely things that were denied to you for YEARS - i get it.

please be careful, please continue to ask hard questions, think critically, and keep learning about what beliefs are out there. i’d say most people who leave a suffocating religion experiment with their identity expression after leaving - it is normal to try several different things before realizing, oh I’m _____ after all! what a freeing, growing process. it could take years. don’t despair. you’re unpacking false narratives about who you are and finding what is truthful enough to replace them with.

being denied bodily autonomy and forced into repressive gender role stereotypes is a recipe to drive traumatized individuals into the arms of some really out-there ideas. when i meet someone who’s left the church and is now ace/demi/aro/femme/poly with ze/zir pronouns and has a name from a video game series, i get it. that in no way makes it to where we cannot hold space with one another, talk about our lives, share our values, explore what we have in common and what we don’t. yes, i’m a radical feminist and that’s partly due to the fact that i escaped an incredibly misogynistic, homophobic, patriarchal cult. 

for some, that will make you automatically say i’m not safe, i’m transphobic, i can’t be trusted, etc. i’m sorry you feel that way. i’m the last person who’s going to tell you WHO to be, HOW to live, WHAT to say because fuck that religious culty bullshit. i only ask that you extend the same courtesy to me. this post is not meant to generalize an entire population of people or to say “you’re trans because of religious trauma not because that’s who you really are” because I don’t believe that. I just am identifying a trend that I see, offering a possible explanation, and opening myself up to dialogue. 

no god, no hell, no cross - you belong deeply to yourself.

#cult #cults #cult survivor #antijw #anti jw #ex jw #ex mormon #ex lds #lds #ex christian #christian #jw #catholic #jewish #deconversion #deconvert #exvangelical #apostasy #apostate #apocalypse #god #jesus #the bible #church #christ #jesus christ #scripture #theology #religion #old testament

[independentartistbuzz]

7 From The Women is a segment here on Independent Artist Buzz where we ask some of the industries finest seven questions. During this time of accusations and the lack thereof, we think it’s important to give women a voice. We chose to ask seven questions to honor the seven Wiccan clans.

Kristen Rae Bowden is a beautiful turmoil of tenderness and willfulness. It’s a paradoxical sentiment also evident in her artistic sensibilities. In her upcoming debut, Language and Mirrors, she fluidly, and authentically, inhabits earthy Americana and majestic orchestral rock.

What have you been working to promote lately?

In November 2018 I released my first album, entitled “Language and Mirrors.” On March 15 2019 I will release my first music video from the album. The video is for my song “It Isn’t About You.”

I wrote “It Isn’t About You” while living in a screened-in-shack with no power on the Big Island of Hawaii. I was 22, fresh from college, excited by the idea of living “off the grid”, and very much in love with a young man whose family owned land in Hawaii. After we moved there, however, our relationship quickly deteriorated, practically turning to dust before my eyes. I felt powerless to save it, or leave.

I found myself on a metaphorical island, as well as a real one, and my feeling of isolation stemmed from my obsession with the unhealthy relationship. It became difficult for me to imagine myself outside of it; I no longer felt whole on my own.

Even without electricity, I remained a night owl. I stayed up alone in the tiny dark house on the edge of the jungle, drinking wine, and writing poetry by candlelight. This is how I wrote “It Isn’t About You”: as part of a long, freeform poem. (It is one of my only songs where I wrote the lyrics first.)

Later, I put the poem to music, after I finally got the courage to leave the relationship, and I’d steadied my mind. The song is about making that return to yourself and your own joys, strengths, and needs. It is also about taking responsibility for your own choices, so that you never feel (unnecessarily) like a victim, and you can move on.

The music video for “It Isn’t About You” will premiere on Facebook Premiere on Friday March 15 at 1:00 pm.

Please tell us about your favorite song written, recorded or produced by another woman and why it’s meaningful to you.

I think, after all these years, my favorite track written by a woman is still Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You”. The melody starts out conversational, understated, and then it soars! The simplicity of the instrumentation creates such an intimate experience, you feel like she’s in your living room, singing right in your ear. You hear every word, which is perfect because her lyrics go straight to the heart.

The beauty of the poem alone overwhelms me. Joni has a way of writing lyrics that are very specific to her own experience, and full of imagery, but when I listen to them, I feel like they are about me too. Much like an abstract painting where different people will see different things, Joni’s artful words allow you to color them with your own experience. This makes me feel truly known, and comforted somehow as a human being, because I know I’m not alone.

What does it mean to you to be a woman making music/in the music business today and do you feel a responsibility to other women to create messages and themes in your music?

When I decided I wanted to become a career musician, I didn’t think at all about my gender. I just knew I wanted to make music; that’s all I thought about.

Now, I believe that as a woman in the music industry, I have the opportunity to showcase a more feminine (as in the divine) incarnation of strength. As a culture I think we view strength in a very masculine way; it often means hardness, stoicism. I believe we tend to ignore the strength that it takes to be vulnerable... the strength that lies in open-heartedness and flexibility. After all, a branch that cannot bend is more likely to break. In my songs, I find myself wanting to express this: how brave one must be to remain open-hearted. I think it is something I have to offer that has to do with my womanhood and femininity.

When I write I honestly don’t feel a responsibility to create certain messages and themes in my music. I write according to my feelings, so those end up being the messages and themes. However, when I write a song about a certain moment in my life, I definitely listen critically to the song and ask myself what kind of message it is going to send into the world.

Once I wrote a song about a previous boyfriend cheating on me with a girl who I really thought was my friend. They both lied to me about it for several weeks. It was overwhelmingly hurtful. Some men say they have a “bro’s code” to not let women come between them. So, I wrote this song about the lack of a “girls code”, and basically sang about how I knew my boyfriend at the time was going to lie to me, that was obvious. But I never expected my woman friend to be a part of it, sneaking around and lying to me also.

Later I realized I couldn’t release the song, because of the message one might take from it. My lyrics ended up sounding too much like a woman who blames the other woman when her significant other lies to her, instead of holding him responsible, and also taking responsibility for the choice she has made to be with him. What that particular “friend” did to me was unkind, but I don’t ever want to sound like a woman who puts other women down as a group. I didn’t want to risk being interpreted in that way.

I hope to be a voice of catharsis, empowerment, and empathy.

What is the most personal thing you have shared in your music or in your artist brand as it relates to being female?

My most personal song is “My Father’s Daughter”. My Dad was an extremely charismatic, artistic, and captivating man. He was also quite the womanizer. He passed away when I was 18, and I still miss him every single day.

I think as a girl, when you grow up with a Dad who is your absolute favorite person, but over time you learn about some of his negative proclivities, you’ll have some kind of emotional reaction. And the reaction will be based (at least in part) on how you are his daughter. If you were his son, you might respond quite differently.

“My Father’s Daughter” is really about me getting into a relationship with a man who had also lost his artistic (and womanizing) father. He had a daddy-backstory similar to mine, but he had responded in a completely different way. We could understand each other better in some ways due to the similarities in our respective Dads’ personalities, but in other ways we really had no hope of ever understanding each other.

The song also has to do with the fact that sometimes, there is no stronger bond than shared grief.

I think this is the most personal thing I’ve written as it relates to being female, because it’s specific to what we would call “Daddy issues”. Anyone can have Daddy issues, regardless of their gender, but being female definitely effects how these complicated feelings play out in one’s life. This is true for me, at least.

What female artists have inspired you and influenced you?

So many! I’ve already mentioned Joni Mitchell. I just finished reading “Just Kids” and Patti Smith is a poetic hero. Others include Joan Jett, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin, Patsy Cline, Erykah Badu, Zap Mama, Emmylou Harris, Iris DeMent, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Stevie Nicks, Carole King, Amy Winehouse, Bjork, Lady Gaga, Billie Holiday, Ani DiFranco, and Tracy Chapman.

Who was the first female artist you saw that made you want to create music / be in the business?

When I was 19, my sister and I went to see Ani DiFranco. I remember loving how the audience was overwhelmingly female, right as I walked in. I noted to myself how rare it is to be in the company of mostly women, at least for me. Ani sang her songs and I think everyone in the theater was affected, you could just feel it in the air. I laughed and I cried. I marveled at how she connected with each member of the audience personally ; she made each of us feel like we’d met her. Each of her songs consistently blew me away with her confessional storytelling. She stirred my emotions and completely inspired me.

The next night I went into a practice room at my college, played the piano, and wrote my first real song. I didn’t mean to write it ; it surprised me. It was about my Dad dying, which had happened about a year before. I scribbled it on a cocktail napkin that I’ve saved ever since.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? If so why and if not why?

I definitely consider myself a feminist. Women deserve equal rights and bodily autonomy, period. I grew up very privileged, in a community/culture that told me I could be anything I wanted, so I have to admit I was rather shocked to find out that some people still think women aren’t supposed to do certain jobs or have certain roles in life. I also grew up in a very homogenous community. For a long time I was very ignorant when it comes to the idea of intersectional feminism, and I still have a lot to learn about how feminism can exclude the experiences and points of view of women of color and LGBTQ women. It is important to me to be an ally to all women, especially those in minority communities, as they are the ones who are most effected by sexism and discrimination. Learning how to be a good ally is an ongoing process, and I consider it my responsibility to educate myself about issues outside of my personal experience. All in all, I am a feminist because women are still so marginalized, all over the world. Women’s rights are human rights, and as long as things remain unbalanced, this deserves our constant attention.

Connect with Kristen online:

https://www.kristenraebowden.com

https://www.facebook.com/KristenRaeBowden/

https://www.instagram.com/kristenraebowden/

https://twitter.com/bowdenrae?lang=en

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0PPhdmifjwxW8fkF_CxIoQ

https://kristenraebowden.tumblr.com/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2mi6KqRPH72KiS6r1A9ePI?nd=1

https://soundcloud.com/kristenraebowden

https://kristenraebowden.bandcamp.com/releases

#kristen rae bowden #7 from the women #female musician #girl power #feminism #feminist #indie music #indie artist #iab #independent artist buzz

[shintowitch]

Hi! I'm a newbie witch that has been feeling a pull towards shintoism beliefs in my witchcraft practice. The problem is, I haven't really run into many other witches that practice shintoism, so I don't really know what to do. Do you think you could give me some beginner tips? Your blog is so amazing, I wish I had the experience you did!

Hello there – sorry this is a delayed response, I’m largely on mobile atm due to work! But I’m happy to answer any questions you might have to the best of my ability.

For me, shintoism came to feature in my witchcraft because shinto came first – I was raised into it and it’s how I connect to the world spiritually, so it’s only natural that it would play into any witchiness I get up to. However, I’ve tried to gather some food for thought for you! (This starts with the real basics – sorry if you already know some of this, I just want to be comprehensive!)

🌸 One of the core beliefs of shintoism (in its folkiest incarnations as much as the “official” religion) is in animism: the belief that living spirits inhabit all things. From animals to plants to rocks to manmade objects to geographical locations and natural phenomenons, even concepts and language/words, everything is alive and has agency, the spiritual and material are truly not so far apart, and the two define and affect each other. This is central to my witchcraft practises.

🌸 Looking at everything around you as though they have their own life and significance affects your practise all by itself. You notice more, pay attention more, and with luck, feel awe and curiosity and respect for the things that you see. My path of witchcraft is about learning, awareness, exploring, experimenting, creating and trying to come to a further understanding of the universe and myself just as much as trying to influence the world.

🌸 Spiritual unrest often needs a dose of understanding, empathy and respect to deal with – not just a shitload of banishing and cleansing. Spirits can become unhappy or twisted and cause issues for many reasons, and they can be painful ones for them such as abandonment, neglect or abuse (there are forms of yokai – sort of like monster or demon spirits – in Japanese folklore that are born of manmade tools such as umbrellas and lanterns not being properly cared for or disposed of when their use had come to an end, leaving an unhappy inhabitant spirit. Give thanks to your umbrella today!).

🌸 None of the above is to say that you shouldn’t use appropriate protective, cleansing and warding measures if you choose to begin dabbling with spirits.

🌸 If you mean you feel closer to shinto in terms of believing in and wanting to venerate specific shinto kami/deities and spirits – that’s fine too! Shinto is an open religion. The philosophy of the religion excludes nobody – after all, it is distinctly about the life and soul in all things. Just remember to be respectful, don’t treat it like a fad or a game, do research, ask questions if you need to – and be respectful of other religions too. Nothing about following the way of the kami necessitates any disrespect towards any other religious path – in fact, state shinto historically absorbed and exchanged ideas and deities with buddhism and hinduism due to being so flexible and already having such diversity in its beliefs and practises.

🌸 Following the traditional methods of venerating these deities and spirits will help you connect to them more, but it’s okay if that’s difficult for you. Do what you can. I’ve been finding my own ways of following my path ever since I left my home country.

🌸 Not to get into Witchblr Discourse™, but the autonomy of spirits is of incredible importance to my beliefs. Other people can practise their craft as they will, but purchasing spirits for money or restricting their movement without due cause, etc, are not things that sit well with my religion/philosophy and my practise reflects this. I understand that people of different paths have different experiences with spirits and that’s okay – this is mine.

🌸 The first form of what would be called spirit work or witchcraft in English terms that I was introduced to was establishing a connection with the spirits of my ancestors. My baba began teaching me this as a young child. This is a folksy Japanese cultural thing as much as it is a shinto-specific thing, but there’s a lot of overlap there. I have certainly found it a necessary and useful grounding method and connection to my past and path – and I have also had to create new ways to keep this connection open, being so far from my ancestral home and family shrines on that side.

🌸 Beginning to attune yourself to the everyday spirits that surround you is the best way to begin in practical terms, imo. It’s as simple as opening your mind and taking notice. I’d also recommend growing plants from seed as an easy way to nurture and learn about some newborn nature spirits. I have five batches of seedlings growing atm and they inspire me every day! It’s only once you get to know and understand the spiritual that you can begin to affect change on that level.

At the end of the day, your path is your own to carve, but I’ll be happy to answer if you have any specific questions. A fair portion of the above come down to a certain manner of thinking and belief in any case. 

When I get more time I hope to write some more about my experiences and practise and give useful information where possible, but as I have created a lot of my methods myself using my spiritual background and what I learned in my youth as a starting point, remember it’s not ~Ancient Wisdom~ that I’m passing down a lot of the time but simply my own findings! And there are some things I simply cannot share.

I hope this was helpful! 🌸

#shintowitch #shintowitch diaries #ask #alilikinz #paths #witchcraft #witching #my posts #advice

[roughentumble]

DISCLAIMER I PROBABLY PULLED ALL OF THIS OUT OF MY ASS AND ITS PROBABLY A BAD INTERPRETATION BUT ITS MINE SO BACK OFF

SORRY. IDK WHY I SUCK AT EVALUATING THIS MOVIE IN PARTICULAR imo, theres a LOT of emphasis put on control. they talk about dictatorships, how they repress both art/culture, AND knowledge/learning. i'm gonna avoid talking about what i think Really Happened, because i havent entirely worked that out for myself, but for themes and what they represent and why this story's being told... i think it's largely a meditation on the ways we're repressed by society at large, our smaller and more insular social groups, and the closest relationships with loved ones(so essentially, the world at large and at every level of interpersonal relationship and society in general) we're given a tale of two physically identical people to illustrate two extremes in behavior and personality, and how the same outside forces conspire in the same way to tear them apart, tear them down, and force them into roles they dont want to inhabit. it also forcibly strips them from their individuality, their personhood, and their self expression- they will never be a single, unique person ever again, because they will always know there's someone else out there wearing their face. going back to the extremes in behavior n such... it's easy to be an academic and look at someone who is an actor, or an artist, and think of them as the penultimate in self-expression and personal freedom. but at the same time, if you're a creative it's easy to look at someone in a more stable, academic or scientific role and think that they have more freedom to be themselves, in that they dont need to constantly maintain an Artsy Appearance to Stay Relevant n such. they can literally just be who they are, and if they have no inspiration they can just go back to work until true inspiration strikes. but thats ultimately not true, because NO ONE is allowed true self expression. neither of these men are allowed to be their authentic selves!! the teacher spends nights drinking wine and plowing his fuckbuddy, sure, but it's PASSIONLESS, it's rote and he's sick of it but he has nothing else. everyone(including his own mother) tells him he has a good apartment, a great career, he should be happy and thankful for what he has, but what he has doesnt FULFILL him. but he keeps doing it anyway, because it's the narrative society's constructed for him, the Correct Life Path. he's miserable, and trying to communicate so gets him shut down and told there's something wrong with him. he's held to the expectations of that life, whether he wants it or not and the actor man sees his casual fuck buddy and his complete lack of immanent baby-having and sees him as the pinnacle of freedom, because this isnt the life he wanted for himself either. anthony's miserable, he feels trapped, and he has no outlet to escape into the life he WANTS to live. he wants to be single, he wants to drink and fuck and he absolutely doesnt want a baby. he doesnt want to be a father. also, it's interesting to note how adam steps into anthony's life at the end. they both look the same because they're both put under the same pressure to conform to society's expectations, and he's capable of putting on a persona and playacting as anthony, but it's as fake and miserable and heavy as his last one. and it only brings to light how REPLACEABLE he is. even in anthony's death(assuming he died in that car crash), adam is STILL NOT GRANTED HIS OWN AUTONOMY! he still cant escape the knowlede that he's not his own person, he's a puppet of society who doesnt get to feel genuine joy or self determination because NONE OF THIS IS THE LIFE HE WANTED TO LIVE, but both are the life he's now forced to inhabit. so like.... lets talk about this from different levels. starting with the closest ring(wife, mother, best friend, other close relationships), then the second closest(work friends, neighborhood, social groups you choose to be part of like your local DnD group or soccar team or whatever your niche interest is), then the farthest ring(society as a whole) so. well actually maybe its fairly obvious, and i dont need to get into it??? hmm. well, obviously anthony feels trapped by his wife. he doesnt like that she's pregnant or that he's being tied down, and as much as adam isnt big on his current relationship, hes not exactly thrilled by the pregnant wife either, because of the way she represents a loss of self identity she shows how easily he can step into someone else's life to replace them, AND how easily he himself can be replaced, and how he can never truly be himself. she also imposes a lot of ideas of how he should be onto him. same with the mother, she's cruelly dismissive of adam's wants and desires and creative self expression, all in an attempt to love him and "look out for him"- because if he's financially stable then he's provided for and safe and that's all that matters. not his actual happiness, but rather how "safe" he is and how much she can pat herself on the back for having raised such a "respectful" child things turn awkward in adam's life whenever he expresses a dissenting opinion(he isnt a huge film fan, but most people are expected to have at least a passing interest in film, and when his coworker brings up films as a neutral topic and he expresses that he isnt a fan, it turns the conversation awkward and stilted until he's given a film to watch anyway, because that's the social expectation) what's funny though, is that despite their ultimately antagonistic relationship and the way they reflect a loss of individuality and personhood, the only reason they meet is because of the intersection of knowledge and culture, and they find in each other a sense of community, commiseration, and relatability. who do they understand instantly and intrinsically? who do they seek out? who do they actually SHOW THEIR TRUE EMOTIONS TO throughout the film? EACH OTHER. on the phone with each other for the first time, adam starts stumbling over his words and saying things in the worst possible way, and admits he only gets this way when he's excited, yet we never see him act like that again throughout the film... because nothing else EXCITES him he's excited by the thought of someone else understanding. of someone to commiserate with, to relate to. someone who feels what he feels. a sense of true community. and he gets that, but in doing so looses the one thing that he truly thought of as unique(viewing himself as one of the only- or at least the few- who felt stifled and lacking in true creative outlets in their lives) (i also think thats why anthony responds with more joy and amazement, because for him he's reassured by the communal feeling and the fact that even someone in a Respectable Job could feel that way, whereas adam is horrified because EVEN PEOPLE IN CREATIVE JOBS FEEL THAT WAY) society at large held them both down to such a startling degree that anthony viewed his wife as a spider, himself caught in a web of commitment, while adam felt every day blur together as he shambled through life in a daze, both steeped in misery. they hated their lives, lives imposed on them by a society that operates through subjugation and a suppression of individuality. and they both embodied one of the two major things you can use to combat such a society- and they were both held back and burdened by expectations specifically tailored to hold back those ideas, and keep that individuality from blossoming. but then adam's knowledge met with anthony's art/culture, and they were able to OPEN UP to one another. knowledge became aware of art, and together they forged themselves a small space to really try and feel what they felt and develop who they are as people, without all these expectations weighing them down and moulding them into people they didnt wanna be. and did they ultimately crash and burn(no pun intended)? yeah. they did. but they tried. and they only failed so spectacularly because of a society that wanted them to fail, that kept their emotional growth in that area stunted to keep them from ever rising up against these ingrained ideas that are ultimately harmful now, am i saying these were two good and pure men deserving only of nice things, who never made a mistake???? no. they were both huge assholes. i mean, anthony wanted to fuck adam's GF... WHILE SHE THOUGHT HE WAS ADAM. he tried to push her out a goddamn moving car. adam tried to fuck her while she was asleep at one point, and then fucked anthony's wife while SHE thought HE was anthony---- these are SHITTY PEOPLE. but i mean... i dunno, its, the point isnt to be about perfect people, but instead to show how badly all these limitations and expectations can fuck people up, leave them emotionally stunted and miserable, how it can lead to depression and a lack of identity or a sense of self... how it leads to tragedy, basically.

#enemy tag #long post tag

[sonoflucis-archive]

This is long af and honestly really really deeply personal and highly opinionated. This is about love, but it’s a hard love. It’s the love I learned from Angrboda, mother of monsters like me. Some love is sharp and has teeth. Insisting that love is only soft and sweet is a disservice to everyone who has lived the experience that that is not always true. 

warning for mention of sexual assault. Nothing graphic, just referring to a point in time when things happened. 

I went through hell to become who I am today. To have control of my thoughts, of my reactions. 

I went from being in a situation where I was literally tortured ( ah yes, I was reminded of a lot of things when you asked me where that scar on my back came from. Some of them have fun stories attached. That one doesn’t ) and literally sexually abused for anything I might have done when I pissed my partner off (he bragged to my ex-bff about raping me when I upset him. I was with him for almost six years), to being passed around multiple partners as a glorified concubine who there was never enough of ( but they all needed more, more, more to feel that I really loved them--) to being told that my hypersexuality meant I’d never have long-term relationships (which I already have) to... this. 

I get to decide what “better” is. I get to decide what love looks like when I give it. And I do give it. I have a huge amount of love in me. Tbh? I’m probably like 80% ARO. I’m pretty homosexual but prefer other trans/genderweird ppl as partners. The fact that I’m ARO af and see no point or necessity in separating kinds of love shouldn’t diminish mine. My personal code and beliefs come before anyone. No one, even my soulmates get put ahead of that code and my duty to what I MUST do. That is something I make pretty clear about myself, I think. 

I have romantic notions. In fact, I am so fixated on them that they’re virtually all I can write about. That is largely because of the fact that it’s not something I experience much for myself. 

The way I see it? I love everyone who is good to me at a baseline level. I love and respect their humanity. Your youness, your autonomy is literally holy to me. If you are someone who I talk with regularly, or occasionally share something I found for because I thought you’d like it? I love you. Especially if you’re someone who I just enjoy existing with. I don’t want or need anything from people. I just want to coexist and laugh together. That’s literally all I need. The only thing that separates that from being with me in a “relationship” sense is the conformation, the choice, the esoteric importance of words and language that will re-frame that love. 

And that’s it really: I see most loves as the same, though every relationship looks different (and honestly should). I can tell you that at any given time I’m dating my best friends. They are my best friends first and foremost. Always. I don’t see any sort of problem with having a sexual relationship with a friend, or a non-sexual relationship with a lover. I don’t give a single shit about what a relationship is “supposed” to be or look like. In my reality, in the bubble of space-time that I inhabit, I don’t have any understanding of “rules” for that and I don’t want to. I experience love without limits.

I want to be free, and I want the people I love to be free. I will NEVER ask you to fill the holes in me, though everyone runs into weakness and slips up sometimes. You can’t really do that (demanding) without devouring others. I have always believed that “Suffering and compromise is love!!” stuff is bullshit. Yeah, you have to work to work things out, but you also have to have your own shit in hand. The moment you feel entitled to someone’s emotional labor I think you’ve gone too far-- and no, you don’t get a free pass. You shouldn’t be suffering with the person you love long-term, or demanding they do the work for you. 

There are times when my brain is screaming; voices, hallucinations, you name it-- but I don’t show it outside of a placidity or a need to sleep it off. in those moments, I think: If I don’t get fucked, fucked up, or bleed RIGHT NOW I’m going to die. But I don’t. In those moments, I could make the undignified choice to seek those things out- outside of my sphere of safety,and sometimes I slip up and fall off of the wagon-- but I do my best to choose not to. It is NO ONE’S job to provide me with the kind of attention I want, no matter how much I want it. It’s great when I do get it,but it means fucking nothing if it has to be forced. It means nothing if it’s an obligation. It means nothing if it’s something only offered because you’re afraid of losing your person. Acts of sacrifice are well and good, but they should never be the basis of your love. If they are, you end up with nothing to give. You end up a thrall to what you love. That mentality fucked me up so bad that to this day, I still don’t know how to show romantic affection outside of surrender. Sitting at someone’s feet. Making their meals and caring for them in the places their parents’ should’ve taught them to care for themselves. Literally offering my body as an act of worship. These are the only things I know, though I like to think my repertoire is growing. 

I believe that I am good and worthy. I have fought, bled, and suffered through HELL to earn that. I like myself. I like who I am, and my beliefs are firm. I refuse to be punished for that. They were not handed to me; they are not based on emotion, but on logic and careful self examination. They are not built on a me-centric view of the world, but in respecting everyone around me’s humanity and worth. My beliefs are firm not because they were handed to me by my caregivers, but because I had to build them from the scraps of my world through careful trial and re-trial. I will always believe that my code, my honor, my strength is better than something built out of fear and knee-jerk reactions. 

Just as much as I respect and love and uplift those that call me friend, I am a double edged sword. I will cut out poison quickly and viciously. No plague on the tree of my world will be allowed to survive for long. 

As I came out of high school I developed the framework that would keep me alive for another decade. Three rules: 

1: Have no secrets that you wouldn’t tell your mother/most respected person/significant other. I may have a hard time communicating, but I never purposefully hide anything. It’s really as simple as that, and the rule casts a vicious bright light: If there’s something you want to do that you’d keep secret ask yourself why. It will teach you everything you need to know: Are you ashamed of it? If so is it merely a matter of ego or is it genuinely something you would consider wrong? Are you afraid that they will attack you for it due to a disagreement on that morality? If so, reconsider the level of trust or reliance you’ve assigned to that relationship... no matter how painful that might be. If it comes back to your own embarrassment: Work on it in yourself. Examine it. Force yourself to face it. Do battle with it. Always be honest and you won’t have to keep track of any lies. 

2: Never stop walking. It’s okay to cry, but not to sit down and stop moving towards your inevitability. You’re a shark. If you stop swimming you’re as good as dead. Cry while you walk. Mourn with your whole heart but don’t stop. 

3: Expect nothing. You are entitled to nothing from no one. You are born alone and you die alone. Remember that in those times you will be your only company. Learn to like it, or you will suffer. 

I know what I’m doing, and I know that I have to keep moving forward, regardless of anyone staying with me. No one has to understand for me to be on the path that I chose, that I was meant to walk. I remain a Warrior of Light. That crown is mine and mine alone to bear as it has been before and will be again. 

#nox.txt ♕ #this is a vicious self assessment. #I've written this for me and for me alone.

[yesthateric]

Communal Multiunit Properties

As a single person in my mid thirties I have some conflicting priorities around my living situation. I enjoy living with people for the immediacy of connection that comes with sharing a space. It’s so enriching to have someone who is often immediately at hand to share my moment to moment experience with, even if not always especially deeply. Also, you know, halving my rent isn’t bad either.

Along with the advantage of easy interaction comes the downsides of constant consideration and compromise. Ideally, for those co-habitating in a committed relationship that ongoing focus on your partner’s experience is a natural outcome of a shared trajectory and more seamlessly maintained. For myself, who is not romantically or legally bound to my housemate, I mostly appreciate the grounding element of thinking of someone else’s needs and comfort while I conduct my daily life. I suspect we’re all selfish children deep down inside and that without acculturated controls on that behavior we all will tend slide back towards being self-centered little shits. I worry that living alone would have me sliding towards an overly rigid mental state where I need things “my way”. That isn’t who I want to be. I haven’t found that to be the case in the past while living alone but I was a younger man back then.

I’ve been giving thought to what alternatives there may be to the variations listed above. This evaluation has been driven in part by my recent semi-depressive musings about being single by choice for the foreseeable future. The best idea I have is a communal living model. I’m wondering about a situation where there is the near total availability of autonomy in space, actions and schedule but also easy availability of social interaction. I’ve heard of models where individuals and families have small, private homes that are part of a tight community of similar dwellings. The documentary Happy explores one of the many communal style living situations that exist in Denmark. There’s plenty of research showing that people live happier, safer, richer lives in contexts where they have a sense of belonging and responsibility to those around them.

I’ve been considering home ownership for years but haven’t been in the right place, economically or personally to really pursue it when the prevailing PDX markets were optimal. I love the idea of having a space that I can tailor to my needs and ambitions and truly make an extension of myself. I’m wondering how I can incorporate those goals into an approach that supports a community focused model of housing. 

One potential means to combine personal space with a more immediate community is multi-unit urban housing. I’m thinking specifically of buildings with at least 4 units but fewer than 10. Theoretically this would work but I think it hinges on access to some sort of communal gathering place. A rec-room, large patio space, yard, garden area or ideally all of the above would allow people to have a place to gather while still reserving a private area to conduct their lives independently as they wish. 

Another option could be a larger plot of land on the fringes of urban areas that could support small, independent dwellings. In this scenario there would be a substantial infrastructure element to overcome in installing power, data, water, sewage and establishing some means to deal with refuse. This would be a much more significant community building activity and would certainly complicate any attempts at shared financing and ownership. If infrastructure could be established, the probability of additional acres could make it possible to expand the scope of the community past the 4-10 units that would likely be possible closer to urban centers while also leaving more potential space to prioritize collective areas. Housing could be small scale, modest stick built homes, manufactured or tiny houses. The layout of the community would also impact the sense of shared community among members. A central shared area seems like a good model. 

Another perspective on buying a property that supports multiple tenants is the potential to turn it into a long term investment. I’m uncomfortable with the opaque nature of my retirement and general investments. Currently it’s difficult or impossible for me to really understand what interests I’m funding with my investment dollars and how they align with my personal morals and ideal relation to the world and it’s inhabitants. There are now, certainly, enterprises benefitting, however minorly, from my capital investment that that I would be disturbed to learn about. Investing in housing and becoming a land lord would give me complete transparency into my investment and it’s impact on my community. I would, in fact, be in a position to apply my own ethics to the rental market, potentially offering support to people in my area in need of housing support. Finding a balance between my investment priorities and any solidarity goals that might become possible would almost certainly be difficult and emotional. Regardless of how much of a focus community housing support may be, sheltering my capital in an investment that is both knowable and somewhat separate from the arbitrary chaos of the global capitalist investment market would be comforting.

A large property is also a large investment and one that I may have to put a terrifying percentage of my life savings into to make it happen. An appealing possibility to me is the idea of buying into property as a split investment between myself and one or more, like minded and trusted friends or family. This would split the upfront costs, the ongoing mortgage and also ensure a partner resident to help shape the economic and cultural future of the little community.

Currently looking into the realities of finance for something like this with professionals. We’ll see.

[lauramalchowblog]

Emotional Awareness and Processing Emotions Through Hard Times

There is so much about our current situation that is challenging. There’s the obvious: job loss, financial insecurity, fear about the virus itself, uncertainty about the future. We’re living in a state of limbo, waiting for (more) bad news while trying to figure out what, if anything, we can do to reassert control and order over our lives.

If you’re feeling… well, like you don’t even know what you’re feeling, you’re not alone. All of us are experiencing this massive disruption to our lives, and the collective fear and uncertainty that go along with it, for the first time. We’re learning to navigate and adapt in real time to a world that feels foreign.

It’s normal to feel adrift, to run the gamut of emotions, and experience conflicting emotions sometimes simultaneously.

Emotional Awareness as a First Step Toward Working Through Emotions

It feels like emotions just happen to us. Especially strong negative emotions can feel like they overtake us, inhabiting our body without our permission. To some extent that’s true. What we call “emotions” or “feelings” are our subjective experience of our brain and body’s reaction to a situation. We can’t control the initial physiological response. However, we can shape emotional experiences—how strongly we feel emotions, how the thoughts we have about why we’re feeling a certain way, and how we cope. This process is called emotion regulation.

The first step in any kind of emotion regulation strategy is awareness. We must recognize that we are having an emotional experience and then discern what, exactly, we are feeling. Anger, frustration, and fear all feel bad, but they are very different emotions that should prompt different responses if we are trying to help ourselves feel better.

Mental health professionals suggest that simply naming our emotions, bringing awareness to how we are feeling, can be a first step in coping with emotional upheaval. Putting words to our inner states is one of the goals of therapy. It’s also a tool you can use to help yourself in the moment. When you’re hit with strong feelings, and you don’t know what they mean or what to do about them, simply pausing to say, “I’m feeling _____” can offer a bit of relief.

I’m not suggesting that naming your emotions will magically fix everything, of course. That’s not reasonable. However, it is a tool you can add to your coping toolbox. If you’re like me, you need all the tools you can get right now.

Naming emotions, or affect labeling

Neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel has coined the phrase “name it to tame it.” He explains that emotions come from a region of the brain known as the limbic system. Using language to describe our emotions recruits a different part of the brain, the cortex, which is less stress-reactive. By naming the emotion, we actually “calm” the activity within the limbic system that is triggering such strong emotions.

This is supported by fMRI research conducted by Matthew Lieberman and colleagues. They have shown that “affect labeling” (naming feelings) increases brain activity in the prefrontal cortex, which houses the part of your brain that regulates emotions, and correspondingly decreases amygdala activity, which is the part of the brain responsible for the fight or flight response. Other studies similarly confirm that affect labeling is an effective emotion regulation strategy. Simply naming what you are feeling attenuates negative emotional experiences. It can be as effective as other well-studied regulation strategies like reappraisal and distraction.

Creating Distance

When we’re in the throes of a powerful emotional experience, especially a negative one, we can feel completely out of control. Taking a moment to name what you’re feeling forces you to pause. You have to step outside of your experience to create enough distance to “see” what is happening.

The self-reflection process puts you in the state of “observer” rather than “feeler,” even if just for a moment. Shifting to an “observer” perspective can be enough to break the powerful hold the emotion has over you, turning the out-of-control feeling into a strong-but-manageable feeling.

Now that you have loosened the emotion’s grip, and you know what you’re dealing with, you can move on to coping—self-soothing or asking for help from others.

How Are You Feeling?

Ok.

Fine.

Not great.

Can you be more specific? Many of us struggle to put words to what we’re feeling. It’s usually easy to distinguish between good and bad, but going beyond a few basic emotions requires us to build our emotional vocabulary as well as our connection to our inner selves.

Use an Emotions List or Emotions Wheel

Cheat sheets are perfectly fine when you’re working through a tough time. If you often feel tongue-tied when it comes to describing your emotions, consider consulting an emotions wheel. Here are two versions:

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions – Devised by psychologist Robert Plutchik. He believed there were eight basic emotions, which he organized into four positive-negative pairings: joy and sadness, trust and disgust, fear and anger, anticipation and surprise.

His wheel is organized around these eight emotions. Visually, you can see that each emotion can be felt with more or less intensity, creating new emotional experiences. Anger, for example, might be felt as rage (high intensity) or annoyance (low intensity). More complex emotions arise from combinations of the basic one. For example, in his model, joy and trust combine to create love, while disgust plus anger breeds contempt.

I find the emotional pairings idea to be useful for discerning what I’m feeling especially when it feels like I’m experiencing multiple emotions at once. It can help to try to break the feelings apart and see where they are rooted and how they are interacting.

Junto Emotion Wheel – I like the simplicity of this one. It starts with six core emotions: joy, love, fear, anger, sadness, surprise. Each emotion is then broken down with greater and greater specificity. You can start in the middle and work your way out figuring out what labels do and do not fit what you’re feeling.

Neither one encompasses the whole range of human emotions, of course, but emotion wheels can be good tools for growing your emotional vocabulary. Even if you’re struggling to name your exact feeling, it’s a good exercise to consider what “family” of emotion you are feeling and also what you aren’t feeling.

Is What You’re Feeling Right Now Grief?

If you haven’t suffered an acute loss due to the pandemic, your gut reaction to this question might be “no.” Grief isn’t just something we feel after a death or a great personal tragedy, though. Grief is a response to loss, and we all have experienced losses already. If nothing else, we’ve lost personal freedom and autonomy, being able to go where we want and when. Students and parents are navigating the loss of a school year. Some of us have lost jobs. We’ve lost our sense of “normal.”

What we’re experiencing right now is a type of ambiguous loss. Nobody knows how long this will take or what the new normal will look like once we make it to the other side of this. Pauline Boss, who researches ambiguous loss, says the nature of the ambiguity makes it especially pernicious. We question whether we have a right to feel how we feel. (For the record: YES, you do have the right to feel whatever cocktail of emotions this situation stirs.) Then there’s the comparative suffering—am I allowed to feel bad if other people have it worse? We may be reluctant to call it grief because we know this is temporary—but this keeps us from honoring what we’re actually feeling, so we don’t fully feel it and work through it.

I’m not saying you are for sure experiencing grief. You might not be, and that’s ok. However, I’d encourage you to check in with yourself and see. This is not a label that might initially come to mind but which might feel relevant.

Tools We Can Use Once We Name Our Emotions

Self-Compassion

At a time when so much is out of our control, one thing you can always do is offer yourself compassion. Self-compassion is a powerful tool for helping to relieve the suffering associated with painful experiences and troubling emotions.

Kristin Neff, who pioneered the field of self-compassion research, identifies three components of self-compassion. The first is mindfulness, which entails being aware of our suffering without getting too wrapped up in it. This is where naming comes in.

In self-compassion practice, it’s enough to just recognize that you are having a hard time: “This is suffering” or “I’m struggling right now.” However, you can enhance your mindfulness by going deeper and naming the emotion, making it more specific: “This is fear.” “This is sadness.” “I’m feeling angry.” “I’m feeling hopeless.” Another way of mindfully observing without being completely wrapped up in the emotional experience is to say to yourself, “My body is telling me that I’m experiencing ______.”

In addition to mindfulness, the other components of self-compassion are recognizing the common humanity of your experience and offering yourself kindness. Both can offer you some measure of peace once you’re aware of what you’re feeling. For example, you might say to yourself, “I am feeling anxiety about whether my family will get sick. [Mindfulness] This is a normal reaction to this situation. Lots of people are also experiencing this same type of anxiety. [Common humanity] I wish peace for myself. [Kindness]”

Self-compassion is especially helpful in times like these where we have limited control over the causes of our negative emotions. Next time you are feeling a strong negative emotion, try pausing, naming the emotion, and offering yourself kindness. The wonderful thing about self-compassion, too, is that it gets easier the more you do it.

For more guidance, self-compassion experts Chris Germer and Kristin Neff recently put out an article on practicing self-compassion during these crazy times. You can find it here.

Note that number four on their list is “Being with Difficult Emotions.” They say, “Isolation is not natural for human beings. Just being alone with ourselves for an extended period of time usually brings up challenging emotions. Labeling what we’re feeling while we’re feeling it calms the body, finding the emotion in the body anchors the experience, and responding to ourselves with compassion is the connection we’ve probably needed all along.” (emphasis added)

If you’re struggling with self-compassion, try this guided self-compassion break.

Journaling

Psychologist James Pennebaker began conducting research on expressive writing almost four decades ago. His early studies were inspired by research suggesting that trauma can manifest as physical health symptoms when we keep it locked inside. He thus began a program of research looking at why and how writing about our traumatic experiences helps physical and mental well-being.

Thousands of studies have since been conducted by Pennebaker and others trying to understand exactly how this works. To be honest, we still don’t really understand the mechanisms, but meta-analyses confirm a small but robust effect: writing about our feelings improves well-being.

It’s certainly worth trying. Keep in mind that there are myriad ways to journal, from writing pages and pages to doodling to making lists. In the research on expressive writing, different strategies seem to work better depending on the person and the situation. You might feel better if you purge all your fears and anxieties onto paper. Or, it might be more helpful to focus on the positive things that are coming out of this experience or, along those same lines, to keep a gratitude journal.

Play around and see what feels right to you.

Final Thoughts

Your emotions are likely to fluctuate. That’s not a sign that you’re coping poorly. It’s a reflection of the stress you’re under right now. Working on developing a self-compassion practice can really help with that. (Read that self-compassion article I linked above! Here it is again.)

Still, you’re going to have ups and downs. I certainly don’t mean to imply that naming your emotions will solve all your problems, nor that it’s a substitute for seeking professional help if you’re really struggling. If you’re having significant trouble coping, please seek help from a qualified mental health professional. Your primary care doctor can provide guidance and a referral as a starting point. Situations like these can be especially difficult for people with a past history of trauma. If you’re feeling triggered by current events, don’t wait to seek help. If you’re not able to reach out to your doctor or therapist, the CDC has a list of mental health resources, including a distress helpline. All the therapists I know are practicing remotely right now, so care is still available.

Please take care of yourself during this time and don’t add to your distress by judging yourself harshly for your emotional responses. The goal here is non-judgmental awareness, knowing what you are feeling so you can move forward from a place of self-understanding.

Be well.

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References

Boss, P. (2007). Ambiguous Loss Theory: Challenges for Scholars and Practitioners. Family Relations, 56(2), 105–111.

Burklund, L. J., Creswell, J. D., Irwin, M. R., & Lieberman, M. D. (2014). The common and distinct neural bases of affect labeling and reappraisal in healthy adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 221.

Gallo, I., Garrino, L., & Di Monte, V. (2015). The use of expressive writing in the course of care for cancer patients to reduce emotional distress: Analysis of the literature. Professioni Infermieristiche, 68(1), 29–36.

Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G. (2012). Feelings Into Words: Contributions of Language to Exposure Therapy. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1086–1091.

Lieberman, M. D. (2019). Affect labeling in the age of social media. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(1), 20–21.

Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.

Lieberman, M. D., Inagaki, T. K., Tabibnia, G., & Crockett, M. J. (2011). Subjective responses to emotional stimuli during labeling, reappraisal, and distraction. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 11(3), 468–480.

Niles, A. N., Haltom, K. E. B., Mulvenna, C. M., Lieberman, M. D., & Stanton, A. L. (2014). Randomized controlled trial of expressive writing for psychological and physical health: The moderating role of emotional expressivity. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 27(1), 1–17.

Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166.

Pennebaker, J. W. (2018). Expressive Writing in Psychological Science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 226–229.

Pennebaker, J. W., & Smyth, J. M. (2016). Opening Up by Writing It Down, Third Edition: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain. Guilford Publications.

Smith, S., Anderson-Hanley, C., Langrock, A., & Compas, B. (2005). The effects of journaling for women with newly diagnosed breast cancer. Psycho-Oncology, 14(12), 1075–1082.

Stanton, A. L., Danoff-Burg, S., Sworowski, L. A., Collins, C. A., Branstetter, A. D., Rodriguez-Hanley, A., Kirk, S. B., & Austenfeld, J. L. (2002). Randomized, controlled trial of written emotional expression and benefit finding in breast cancer patients. Journal of Clinical Oncology: Official Journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, 20(20), 4160–4168.

Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling as Implicit Emotion Regulation. Emotion Review, 10(2), 116–124.

Weir, K. (2020). Grief and COVID-19: Mourning our bygone lives. (n.d.). Retrieved April 2, 2020, from https://ift.tt/2JPdCvw

The post Emotional Awareness and Processing Emotions Through Hard Times appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Emotional Awareness and Processing Emotions Through Hard Times published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[jesseneufeld]

Emotional Awareness and Processing Emotions Through Hard Times

There is so much about our current situation that is challenging. There’s the obvious: job loss, financial insecurity, fear about the virus itself, uncertainty about the future. We’re living in a state of limbo, waiting for (more) bad news while trying to figure out what, if anything, we can do to reassert control and order over our lives.

If you’re feeling… well, like you don’t even know what you’re feeling, you’re not alone. All of us are experiencing this massive disruption to our lives, and the collective fear and uncertainty that go along with it, for the first time. We’re learning to navigate and adapt in real time to a world that feels foreign.

It’s normal to feel adrift, to run the gamut of emotions, and experience conflicting emotions sometimes simultaneously.

Emotional Awareness as a First Step Toward Working Through Emotions

It feels like emotions just happen to us. Especially strong negative emotions can feel like they overtake us, inhabiting our body without our permission. To some extent that’s true. What we call “emotions” or “feelings” are our subjective experience of our brain and body’s reaction to a situation. We can’t control the initial physiological response. However, we can shape emotional experiences—how strongly we feel emotions, how the thoughts we have about why we’re feeling a certain way, and how we cope. This process is called emotion regulation.

The first step in any kind of emotion regulation strategy is awareness. We must recognize that we are having an emotional experience and then discern what, exactly, we are feeling. Anger, frustration, and fear all feel bad, but they are very different emotions that should prompt different responses if we are trying to help ourselves feel better.

Mental health professionals suggest that simply naming our emotions, bringing awareness to how we are feeling, can be a first step in coping with emotional upheaval. Putting words to our inner states is one of the goals of therapy. It’s also a tool you can use to help yourself in the moment. When you’re hit with strong feelings, and you don’t know what they mean or what to do about them, simply pausing to say, “I’m feeling _____” can offer a bit of relief.

I’m not suggesting that naming your emotions will magically fix everything, of course. That’s not reasonable. However, it is a tool you can add to your coping toolbox. If you’re like me, you need all the tools you can get right now.

Naming emotions, or affect labeling

Neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel has coined the phrase “name it to tame it.” He explains that emotions come from a region of the brain known as the limbic system. Using language to describe our emotions recruits a different part of the brain, the cortex, which is less stress-reactive. By naming the emotion, we actually “calm” the activity within the limbic system that is triggering such strong emotions.

This is supported by fMRI research conducted by Matthew Lieberman and colleagues. They have shown that “affect labeling” (naming feelings) increases brain activity in the prefrontal cortex, which houses the part of your brain that regulates emotions, and correspondingly decreases amygdala activity, which is the part of the brain responsible for the fight or flight response. Other studies similarly confirm that affect labeling is an effective emotion regulation strategy. Simply naming what you are feeling attenuates negative emotional experiences. It can be as effective as other well-studied regulation strategies like reappraisal and distraction.

Creating Distance

When we’re in the throes of a powerful emotional experience, especially a negative one, we can feel completely out of control. Taking a moment to name what you’re feeling forces you to pause. You have to step outside of your experience to create enough distance to “see” what is happening.

The self-reflection process puts you in the state of “observer” rather than “feeler,” even if just for a moment. Shifting to an “observer” perspective can be enough to break the powerful hold the emotion has over you, turning the out-of-control feeling into a strong-but-manageable feeling.

Now that you have loosened the emotion’s grip, and you know what you’re dealing with, you can move on to coping—self-soothing or asking for help from others.

How Are You Feeling?

Ok.

Fine.

Not great.

Can you be more specific? Many of us struggle to put words to what we’re feeling. It’s usually easy to distinguish between good and bad, but going beyond a few basic emotions requires us to build our emotional vocabulary as well as our connection to our inner selves.

Use an Emotions List or Emotions Wheel

Cheat sheets are perfectly fine when you’re working through a tough time. If you often feel tongue-tied when it comes to describing your emotions, consider consulting an emotions wheel. Here are two versions:

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions – Devised by psychologist Robert Plutchik. He believed there were eight basic emotions, which he organized into four positive-negative pairings: joy and sadness, trust and disgust, fear and anger, anticipation and surprise.

His wheel is organized around these eight emotions. Visually, you can see that each emotion can be felt with more or less intensity, creating new emotional experiences. Anger, for example, might be felt as rage (high intensity) or annoyance (low intensity). More complex emotions arise from combinations of the basic one. For example, in his model, joy and trust combine to create love, while disgust plus anger breeds contempt.

I find the emotional pairings idea to be useful for discerning what I’m feeling especially when it feels like I’m experiencing multiple emotions at once. It can help to try to break the feelings apart and see where they are rooted and how they are interacting.

Junto Emotion Wheel – I like the simplicity of this one. It starts with six core emotions: joy, love, fear, anger, sadness, surprise. Each emotion is then broken down with greater and greater specificity. You can start in the middle and work your way out figuring out what labels do and do not fit what you’re feeling.

Neither one encompasses the whole range of human emotions, of course, but emotion wheels can be good tools for growing your emotional vocabulary. Even if you’re struggling to name your exact feeling, it’s a good exercise to consider what “family” of emotion you are feeling and also what you aren’t feeling.

Is What You’re Feeling Right Now Grief?

If you haven’t suffered an acute loss due to the pandemic, your gut reaction to this question might be “no.” Grief isn’t just something we feel after a death or a great personal tragedy, though. Grief is a response to loss, and we all have experienced losses already. If nothing else, we’ve lost personal freedom and autonomy, being able to go where we want and when. Students and parents are navigating the loss of a school year. Some of us have lost jobs. We’ve lost our sense of “normal.”

What we’re experiencing right now is a type of ambiguous loss. Nobody knows how long this will take or what the new normal will look like once we make it to the other side of this. Pauline Boss, who researches ambiguous loss, says the nature of the ambiguity makes it especially pernicious. We question whether we have a right to feel how we feel. (For the record: YES, you do have the right to feel whatever cocktail of emotions this situation stirs.) Then there’s the comparative suffering—am I allowed to feel bad if other people have it worse? We may be reluctant to call it grief because we know this is temporary—but this keeps us from honoring what we’re actually feeling, so we don’t fully feel it and work through it.

I’m not saying you are for sure experiencing grief. You might not be, and that’s ok. However, I’d encourage you to check in with yourself and see. This is not a label that might initially come to mind but which might feel relevant.

Tools We Can Use Once We Name Our Emotions

Self-Compassion

At a time when so much is out of our control, one thing you can always do is offer yourself compassion. Self-compassion is a powerful tool for helping to relieve the suffering associated with painful experiences and troubling emotions.

Kristin Neff, who pioneered the field of self-compassion research, identifies three components of self-compassion. The first is mindfulness, which entails being aware of our suffering without getting too wrapped up in it. This is where naming comes in.

In self-compassion practice, it’s enough to just recognize that you are having a hard time: “This is suffering” or “I’m struggling right now.” However, you can enhance your mindfulness by going deeper and naming the emotion, making it more specific: “This is fear.” “This is sadness.” “I’m feeling angry.” “I’m feeling hopeless.” Another way of mindfully observing without being completely wrapped up in the emotional experience is to say to yourself, “My body is telling me that I’m experiencing ______.”

In addition to mindfulness, the other components of self-compassion are recognizing the common humanity of your experience and offering yourself kindness. Both can offer you some measure of peace once you’re aware of what you’re feeling. For example, you might say to yourself, “I am feeling anxiety about whether my family will get sick. [Mindfulness] This is a normal reaction to this situation. Lots of people are also experiencing this same type of anxiety. [Common humanity] I wish peace for myself. [Kindness]”

Self-compassion is especially helpful in times like these where we have limited control over the causes of our negative emotions. Next time you are feeling a strong negative emotion, try pausing, naming the emotion, and offering yourself kindness. The wonderful thing about self-compassion, too, is that it gets easier the more you do it.

For more guidance, self-compassion experts Chris Germer and Kristin Neff recently put out an article on practicing self-compassion during these crazy times. You can find it here.

Note that number four on their list is “Being with Difficult Emotions.” They say, “Isolation is not natural for human beings. Just being alone with ourselves for an extended period of time usually brings up challenging emotions. Labeling what we’re feeling while we’re feeling it calms the body, finding the emotion in the body anchors the experience, and responding to ourselves with compassion is the connection we’ve probably needed all along.” (emphasis added)

If you’re struggling with self-compassion, try this guided self-compassion break.

Journaling

Psychologist James Pennebaker began conducting research on expressive writing almost four decades ago. His early studies were inspired by research suggesting that trauma can manifest as physical health symptoms when we keep it locked inside. He thus began a program of research looking at why and how writing about our traumatic experiences helps physical and mental well-being.

Thousands of studies have since been conducted by Pennebaker and others trying to understand exactly how this works. To be honest, we still don’t really understand the mechanisms, but meta-analyses confirm a small but robust effect: writing about our feelings improves well-being.

It’s certainly worth trying. Keep in mind that there are myriad ways to journal, from writing pages and pages to doodling to making lists. In the research on expressive writing, different strategies seem to work better depending on the person and the situation. You might feel better if you purge all your fears and anxieties onto paper. Or, it might be more helpful to focus on the positive things that are coming out of this experience or, along those same lines, to keep a gratitude journal.

Play around and see what feels right to you.

Final Thoughts

Your emotions are likely to fluctuate. That’s not a sign that you’re coping poorly. It’s a reflection of the stress you’re under right now. Working on developing a self-compassion practice can really help with that. (Read that self-compassion article I linked above! Here it is again.)

Still, you’re going to have ups and downs. I certainly don’t mean to imply that naming your emotions will solve all your problems, nor that it’s a substitute for seeking professional help if you’re really struggling. If you’re having significant trouble coping, please seek help from a qualified mental health professional. Your primary care doctor can provide guidance and a referral as a starting point. Situations like these can be especially difficult for people with a past history of trauma. If you’re feeling triggered by current events, don’t wait to seek help. If you’re not able to reach out to your doctor or therapist, the CDC has a list of mental health resources, including a distress helpline. All the therapists I know are practicing remotely right now, so care is still available.

Please take care of yourself during this time and don’t add to your distress by judging yourself harshly for your emotional responses. The goal here is non-judgmental awareness, knowing what you are feeling so you can move forward from a place of self-understanding.

Be well.

(function($) { $("#dfbX5BB").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=674&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=dfbX5BB" ); })( jQuery );

References

Boss, P. (2007). Ambiguous Loss Theory: Challenges for Scholars and Practitioners. Family Relations, 56(2), 105–111.

Burklund, L. J., Creswell, J. D., Irwin, M. R., & Lieberman, M. D. (2014). The common and distinct neural bases of affect labeling and reappraisal in healthy adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 221.

Gallo, I., Garrino, L., & Di Monte, V. (2015). The use of expressive writing in the course of care for cancer patients to reduce emotional distress: Analysis of the literature. Professioni Infermieristiche, 68(1), 29–36.

Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G. (2012). Feelings Into Words: Contributions of Language to Exposure Therapy. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1086–1091.

Lieberman, M. D. (2019). Affect labeling in the age of social media. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(1), 20–21.

Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.

Lieberman, M. D., Inagaki, T. K., Tabibnia, G., & Crockett, M. J. (2011). Subjective responses to emotional stimuli during labeling, reappraisal, and distraction. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 11(3), 468–480.

Niles, A. N., Haltom, K. E. B., Mulvenna, C. M., Lieberman, M. D., & Stanton, A. L. (2014). Randomized controlled trial of expressive writing for psychological and physical health: The moderating role of emotional expressivity. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 27(1), 1–17.

Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166.

Pennebaker, J. W. (2018). Expressive Writing in Psychological Science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 226–229.

Pennebaker, J. W., & Smyth, J. M. (2016). Opening Up by Writing It Down, Third Edition: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain. Guilford Publications.

Smith, S., Anderson-Hanley, C., Langrock, A., & Compas, B. (2005). The effects of journaling for women with newly diagnosed breast cancer. Psycho-Oncology, 14(12), 1075–1082.

Stanton, A. L., Danoff-Burg, S., Sworowski, L. A., Collins, C. A., Branstetter, A. D., Rodriguez-Hanley, A., Kirk, S. B., & Austenfeld, J. L. (2002). Randomized, controlled trial of written emotional expression and benefit finding in breast cancer patients. Journal of Clinical Oncology: Official Journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, 20(20), 4160–4168.

Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling as Implicit Emotion Regulation. Emotion Review, 10(2), 116–124.

Weir, K. (2020). Grief and COVID-19: Mourning our bygone lives. (n.d.). Retrieved April 2, 2020, from https://ift.tt/2JPdCvw

The post Emotional Awareness and Processing Emotions Through Hard Times appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Emotional Awareness and Processing Emotions Through Hard Times published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

[inhabitonline]

Inhabit: At Home with Patty Sheehan

Who are you? 

My name is Patty Sheehan, Commissioner Patty Sheehan. Although, I don’t insist on people using my title because I think there’s a lot more respect in a tone of voice than a title. I’m 56 years old. I live in Colonialtown with my little rescue dog, Sienna. I have four urban chickens and a cat named Nina Simone. Where are we currently and what is the importance of this space? Right now we are in my living room. This is my sanctuary. I collect a lot of local art. I’ve got lots of local artists from Tony Garren to Crawford to crazy boom art guy to Lee Vandergrift. To me it’s kind of like I remember where I was and how I met the artist. Usually it’s at a show and there’s a really cool experience that’s attached to it.

Patty is also an artist. She has an ongoing project called “Bad Kitty” which she began as a form of therapy after a bad breakup. I lost 3 quarters of my pets and a lot of my stuff. And the only thing that was left in the house when I got home was a few pieces of furniture and some canvases. And I missed my cat. So I started painting the cat as therapy, which is ridiculous. It was kind of my way to kind of reconnect with him and the crazy thing is that my friend Mindy Cowells saw the paintings. I was crying into my beer one night and I said “Look at my cat.” She said, “These are delightful. We’re gonna do a show.” I always thought I was gonna be an artist. But politics [and public service] is what I do for a living. But I still have this intense connection to artists and a lot of them are my friends. I just love that. I think that gives me a balance. I think that’s why I can handle what I do, because politics can be very mean. Especially now in the political climate we are in. And when Pulse happened, that’s the only way that I healed. I was taking a class at the time [you typically can’t talk in pottery classes] and my instructor said “You take yourself over in the corner and you do what you have to do, I understand.”

I had so much I had to do, but I still went to class because it was a way of connecting to who I was before it happened. They say part of post traumatic stress is it takes you out of who you were, into a bad place, and you have to continue to go back and reconnect with who you were. And that’s the really hard thing for all these Pulse families. They realize they are never going to be the way they were before. And neither will I. Neither is anyone who was affected in any way. 

This is the second time healing through art has been mentioned in one of the interviews in this column. One of the first people that we interviewed, his name was Doug. He’s a poet. He owned two schools where he taught people to be massage therapists and before that he was in the military. One thing he kept bringing up, that you also mentioned, was the aspect of healing through art and how the theme of healing kept coming up for him throughout his life’s different paths. So that’s cool to hear you say that. I think people think “Well you know, I’m gonna pick this course for me and this is gonna be my career and this is what I’m going to do.” But I think it’s really important to be able to adapt. I never was able to support myself through art. So I went into marketing and then I did that for a long time and I moved downtown and I got kind of ticked at my city commissioner for not being responsive and I decided to run. People say, “What are you going to do next?” You know what, bloom where you’re planted. I live in the same house I’ve lived in for 22 years. I love what I do and if I get an opportunity to do something else, fine. I don’t have this 5 year plan where I’ve got to be here [or there]. I think that we don’t do enough to try and perfect everything that we do. I see a lot of folks, especially younger people, and they’re like, “Well, you know, I want to get on this career path and I want to do this and that.”’ I’m like, “If you do every job that you’ve ever had with absolute perfection then you’re gonna be able to [get to where you want]. Don’t look at [any job] as being beneath you. I was a Dunkin Donut hostess. I worked at a plant nursery on hot tar paper all day long laying plants outside, but I was taught at a very young age to do every job to the best of your ability. You could be working at Mcdonald’s, make that best hamburger you can.

Patty and I went on to talk about the idea of success and what it means to our current society.

I could be much wealthier in terms of what most people would count as success. I could make a great deal more money doing anything. People have threatened me, “We’re gonna take your job away!” Well, you know, I could pretty much manage a store and make more money. That’s kind of a fail threat to me to be quite honest. I live simply. I think that most people think of material success as wealth. I’m reading Yvon Chouinard’s book. I don’t know who that is. He’s amazing. He’s the founder of Patagonia and his book is called Let My People Go Surfing and he talks about how he’s managed to make this multi-million dollar company out of living simply and he’s tried with everything he’s doing to interweave that through his life and practice. I don’t think you have to have a huge house to be successful. I see my colleagues sometimes; they’re so worried about losing their jobs that they won’t do the right thing. And you know what, I can do the right thing because I can do anything else and make a lot more money. I’m living within my means and that gives me a sense of autonomy and I’m proud of it.

Patty has spent years getting to know a group of people in a nearby public housing complex. She told me of visiting this neighborhood one year after Thanksgiving and delivering meals to people around the complex.   There was this one family that insisted we come in and they didn’t have much in their house. They had a small dining room table and minimal furniture. This lady had been living in public housing a long time and I knew her story and she had gotten off drugs and she was raising her kids and her kids were now teenagers and they were lovely young ladies. And she said, “I want you to see the wall.” They had put this piece of paper on the wall and she had her children write everything they were thankful for. Here’s people who are living in public housing and they barely have a stick of furniture to their name and they are the most happy people I know and they have this huge thing on their wall [declaring their thankfulness] and my name was on it. People are missing out so much on what life’s really about. And I think the happiest people are the most grateful people. And I can’t tell that story without crying. The people that were helping me pass out dinners probably thought I was completely insane, but you know, that wasn’t staged, she didn’t even know I was going to be coming with that dinner that day. We just knocked on her door and delivered it and it means alot to me that her children would think to say that. Were not grateful enough as people. We always think about what other things we want. It’s all about the next thing. “I’ll be happy if, I’ll be happy when I get this. I’ll be happy when this happens to me.” And I think it’s a false narrative. It’s how we make ourselves miserable and create hell on earth for ourselves. 

Its interesting because I have OCD-like tendencies, not things having to be organized, but things will just continue on repeat in my head over and over. Omg- this house must drive you crazy. 

See, that’s the thing, that doesn’t bother me. It’s literally, I did this thing bad or I’m stressed out with money and it keeps repeating over and over to the point where I can’t focus on anything around me. So I’ve started going to counseling and to go along with with what you were saying, I was asking the counselor, how do I break these modes of obsession and he said, “You should start writing all of the things you are thankful for when you’re starting to obsess and you should start doing random acts of kindness to get you out of your mind. Like if you’re in line at Starbucks, say something to the person behind you, pay for their coffee.” I think we really get caught up with ourselves and it’s amazing how much restoration can come to our selves and to those around us when we are constantly just approaching everything with thankfulness and humility. Yeah, well, part of my addiction was my inner critic and the amount of negative thinking I was doing. So I started doing some reading about that and one of the exercises I found was to make a note of every negative thing you say about yourself or other people. 

By addiction do you mean with alcohol? Alcohol, yeah. I quit drinking four and a half years ago.

So, when I started losing count [of all the negatives], I’m like “Wow, this is awful. I don’t want to live like that.” So instead, I got to, “Okay, I’m saying something negative, how can I turn that around? What am I grateful for and what can I do to make myself feel better instead of worse?” I think it was a vital part of my recovery–gratitude and not giving into all that self-critical thinking and negativity towards others. It’s a toxic suit. And that was a lesson I didn’t learn until I was in my 50’s and some people never learn. I kind of get down on myself. I’m like gosh, I wished had learned this stuff earlier, but bottom line is, you learn it when you’re ready. Life is a journey. We’re all at our places of learning and I’m glad I got there. I found a video from 2007 when I was researching for this interview and you looked completely different. I actually messaged our Chief Editor, and was like, what happened to Patty, she looks hot now!! Hahahahaha. He was like, “She stopped drinking,” and I was like, “Oh, alright. Makes sense!” A lot of people think that and it’s not just drinking. Drinking is a symptom. Everybody has different addictions. It’s because you haven’t dealt with whatever that hole is that you’re trying to fill that with addiction. And I had to deal with my own holes. I had to deal with whatever I was trying to fill. And sometimes peering in that old darkness in your own soul is not a happy time, but it’s necessary to get to the light. You have to know dark to know light. You have to know sorrow to know joy.

People were like, “You had work done!” I have not had plastic surgery! Are you kidding me?!?!? You think I look better because I had work done? I changed my diet. I exercise every day now, which I didn’t do. I don’t have a hangover every morning and I’ve made conscious choices to change my diet and to change a lot of things in my life. It’s all connected. And it’s spiritual. Some people believe in God. Some people don’t. I do. I needed to reconnect that. As a gay person, I thought that God had left me because religious people had left me. But I need to reconnect with that spiritual. I don’t believe God is this man on a cloud with thunderbolts, but I do believe God is in everything. I’m more in tune with the Unitarian kind of spirit, that God is in everything and that God is in everyone. I believe in that source of connection with good. I don’t believe in hell as a place. I don’t believe in heaven as a place. I believe we create it here and I believe in God as a spirit of good in all of us. 

At the Pulse vigil, I don’t know how it came up, but I think you were just talking about hatred within the church towards the LGBTQ community and you said that you considered yourself a Christian. I said I was coming out as a Christian, which is a funny thing to say. That is something I was curious about, because now as you were explaining it, it doesn’t entirely sound like that. I consider myself a Christian because I believe in the Christ-in-all-of-us type of thing. I’m not going to get too much in the weeds of my own personal belief. I think that evangelicals have hijacked Christianity to the point that it’s become almost an obsession with hurting people and judging people. You know, I’m a person who’s actually read the Bible, six times from cover to cover and there are thousands of scriptures about judgement and there’s only a few that call out behavior.

So, if you’re really gonna read it and you’re really saying that you’re following it, judgment is the thing that kind of gets you in trouble. So yeah, I am a Christian and I’m not afraid or ashamed of that. I was raised Catholic. There are many things that I’ve learned through religion that are really really good. And there are some things that I’ve experienced in religion that have been really awful, but I don’t think it’s either or. 

I guess it’s just difficult for me also because I was raised Christian and I still consider myself to be a Christian on most days. I was raised growing up being told, “Homosexuality is a sin” and it’s really difficult for me now as an adult to know people like you and people that I love and say “God doesn’t love them” or that I could even say “God doesn’t agree with them.” But I guess to say that you are a Christ follower, for me, that goes against what I was taught as a kid. Of course, I’ve read it myself. I’m just processing aloud here. I’ve read the man’s words and who did he hang out with? He hung out with hookers and fisherman, who were like the grossest people. He was a carpenter. Would any of the religious people who have built these mega churches be hanging out with Jesus if he was alive today? He’d probably drive a pickup truck, he’d be hanging out with people that they wouldn’t associate with. I think it would be fascinating to do a film with modern Jesus and see how everything would play out. On a lighter note to wrap it up- Politics and religion, my god. 

It’s my fault, I pushed us that direction. You mentioned a lot about paddle boarding, and having the chickens, what are the activities that you enjoy the most outside of art and your job? We’re going to go in the garden in a little bit. That’s my thing. I worked for the Department of Agriculture for 12 years. I worked for Cardinal Homes and we basically sold prefab housing by landscaping it beautifully before anybody else was doing landscaping at apartment complexes. So I’ve always had this connection to art and plants.

My chickens make compost and I make a pot of Bromeliads out of it. To me it’s just this cool connection of all the things that I’m interested in. When I go to another city I go to the farmers market. That’s how I found out about urban chickens. I was in Phoenix and they had this ‘Tour de coops’ and I thought, “That’s the coolest thing I ever heard of.” I started doing research on urban chickens and that was my ordinance. The thing that I think I bring to city council is I will find something I’m fascinated by, work with the planning department, and get an ordinance written. I don’t know of any other commissioners that have really worked on ordinances to get them passed. And that’s what I do, I love what I do. Patty will soon be exhibiting a fall edition of her ongoing series, “Bad Kitty”. Be sure to check it out at The District on September 29th.

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