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much-ado-about-whumping · 1 year

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Help for when you’re having a rough time

(If you're looking for my old pinned post with my whump masterlists, you can find it here.)

In light of some deeply sad news in the whump community today, I’m thinking about how many of us here struggle with mental health, sometimes including physical or mental self-harm and suicidality. Since I know lots of folks might be having a hard time right now, I wanted to share some resources that have helped me in rough moments. Please feel free to add on to this post (or make your own, if you want!) with the resources that have worked for you.

First, a note:

Trauma, shame, and suicidality all tend to isolate - they make us feel like we’re all alone in the world, like no one else would understand us, and like the only solutions we have available to us are ones we can think of all by ourselves. In my experience, the antidote to that is connection. If you’re feeling scared or alone, you can hop into my asks or DMs if you want. I’m sure there are other folks in this community who would offer that, too. Many of us have grappled with mental health struggles, including suicidal ideation, and sometimes we can offer each other the care that can be hard to offer ourselves. Don’t be afraid to reach out if you need support.

A quick note about location: I live in the US, but about half the resources in this post are written guides you can access from anywhere. The hotlines and warmlines linked below are US-based. One or two are accessible in Canada or have an online chat or moderated forum that could be accessed anywhere. If you have good local resources from another place, please reblog and add them! (Thank you, @straight-to-the-pain, for flagging this in the notes!)

That said, here’s my absolute first recommendation if you’re feeling generally awful and don’t know what to do:

1. You Feel Like Shit (also available at its original site here)

If you’ve read a lot of ~self care tips~ in your life (and if you’re a bit of a salty bitch like me), you might be sick of being told to eat something and take a nap. (I don’t think we can hydrate our way out of long-term trauma and late-stage capitalistic hell, but thanks.) That said, I’ve found this site REALLY helpful. Personally, I have ADHD and CPTSD, a combination that makes it ROUGH for me to know how to take care of myself sometimes. This site speaks to you calmly, like a non-judgemental friend, and walks you through steps that you might struggle with if you have a hard time with executive function in general, or if you’re ill, grieving, overwhelmed, or otherwise just off your game. I pretty much always walk away feeling at least a little better, even if I don’t complete every step.

There are more suggestions and resources below the cut. Wishing everyone in this community love and care. <3

2. The 15-Minute Rule (info available in many places; after a quick google, I really like this site as a place to start)

One key principle to understanding the resources I’ve put together here is the 15-minute rule. If you’re feeling an urge towards physical or mental self-harm or suicide, studies show that the urge is unlikely to last more than about 15 minutes at its peak intensity. (Sorry I don’t have data on this off the bat - anecdotally, I can tell you that this rule also tracks with my own personal experience.) This means that, if you’re presently feeling overwhelmed by grief or pain that’s turning inwards on you, if you can stay afloat through the next few minutes, the tide of it is likely to ebb. The site I linked above has information about this concept and some great harm-reduction ideas, too. (Another resource on this that I liked in my quick search is here.)

3. Read This First (a compassionate distraction from feelings of self-harm)

I’m gonna be honest; this resource is aimed at folks having urges towards physical self-harm, but it looks like something I would find helpful with urges towards emotional self-harm, too. (It also looks like it could be handy for body-focused repetitive behaviors - BFRBs - like dermatillomania/skin-picking or trichotillomania/hair-pulling).

4. Resources from Pete Walker, psychotherapist and author of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

Obviously not everyone reading this will have complex PTSD (also called C-PTSD), but if you’re a person who, in general, tends to beat yourself up a lot, I’d highly recommend checking Pete Walker’s work out. If some of it doesn’t apply to you, that’s okay - take what you need, and leave the rest. This site (and the book it references most heavily) assumes you may have had parents who were emotionally or physically abusive or neglectful. If that doesn’t ring true for you, but other parts of the resources seem helpful, use them anyway! A handy place to start maybe this page on Shrinking the Inner Critic in Complex PTSD (that is, reducing the volume of the voice that screeches unpleasantness at you when you feel ashamed or scared).

As a note: this website looks VERY mid-2000s (which I kind of love). Most of the resources you want will be in the right-hand column full of links. Some of those links will open new pages, and some will automatically try to download a PDF of the article you want to read.

5. Warmlines:

This is something I just learned today - if you’re feeling really lonely and sad, but you’re not in immediate crisis, there are warmlines you can contact! These seem to be numbers where you can call (or sometimes text) to talk with a counselor or trained peer when you need support and connection. I can’t vouch for any of these numbers personally, but as someone who has definitely thought, “It’s not bad enough to REALLY need help,” I think this is a fabulous idea. Here’s a list of warmlines you can check out in the US.

6. Specialized hotlines:

There are lots of good crisis hotlines out there, but some may be better for your needs than others. For one thing, if you’re feeling seriously suicidal, it’s good to know the policies of the hotline you’re calling. In my opinion, everyone deserves bodily autonomy and the right to refuse care; for that reason, I think it’s important to know the policy of the hotline you’re calling as to whether or not they’ll call emergency services without your consent. Everyone has to make their own judgment call on this one, and I’m a little too (lightly!) triggered to go deep into my analysis on this right now, but I wanted to flag that it’s something to be aware of - if you’re going to call a hotline, you can try to look up their policy on calling emergency services before you contact them. You could probably even ask them in the beginning of the call. (A script: “Before we start, can you tell me what your policy is about contacting emergency services on behalf of callers?” If this is true, you can add: “I’m having some feelings of [suicidality/self-harm], but I’m safe and am not in danger of hurting myself or others.”)

With that in mind, here are some hotlines that seem promising to me, in no particular order:

A. For queer and trans folks in general:

Trans LifeLine

Available in the US (1-877-565-8860) and Canada (1-877-330-6366)

Available in English and Spanish

Will NOT call emergency services without your consent (you can read more about this policy on their website, including here)

Peer to peer support for transgender and questioning folks; also, microgrants (small amounts of money) for trans-related needs!

Does not offer text/chat-based support

I’ve never used Trans LifeLine myself, but I’ve heard excellent things about it from peers who have.

The Trevor Project:

Support from trained counselors for queer, trans, and questioning folks

Definitely available in the US; I’m not sure where else.

Offers support via phone (1-866-488-7386), text message (678-678), and online chat (link here - scroll down to Start Chat)

Also offers an online peer support space, TrevorSpace, for folks ages 13-24

Their site says, “In very specific instances of abuse or a clear concern of an in-progress or imminent suicide, Trevor counselors may need to contact a child welfare agency or emergency service.” When you click Learn More, it takes you to their Terms of Service (informative, but in legalese that might be hard to parse if you’re in crisis).

Again, not a service I’ve used myself, but I’ve heard good things!

B. For BIPOC folks (Black folks, Indigenous folks, and people of color more broadly), especially those who also hold LQBTQI identities:

Call Blackline:

Available via phone or text (both at 1-800-604-5841)

Available for people in crisis. Call Blackline can also help connect you with local community organizers and officials if you need to report a negative, inappropriate, or physical interaction with police, other law enforcement, or vigilantes.

From their website:

Call BlackLine® provides a space for peer support, counseling, reporting of mistreatment, witnessing and affirming the lived experiences for folxs who are most impacted by systematic oppression with an LGBTQ+ Black Femme Lens.Call BlackLine® prioritizes BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). By us for us.

Here’s what I found regarding their policy on emergency services:

You do not have to provide any personal information to use the service. All calls remain private and will never be shared with law enforcement or state agencies of any kind.

Of course, a BIPOC person can contact any hotline for support, but for people dealing with racism, anti-Blackness, and other specific bigotries, I can very much see the importance of talking to someone who shares or understands that experience.

C. For folks processing bad psychedelic trips:

Fireside Project:

This one is something I didn’t even know existed! They do call- or text-based support (1-623-473-7433, or 1-62-FIRESIDE) for people processing psychedelic drug experiences, available 11am to 11pm Pacific time. I don’t have a ton more info, but their site seems really interesting and like they’re serving a unique need.

7. A soothing distraction:

One of the glories of the internet is the fact that it enables us to conjure up images of kittens at a moment’s notice. In that vein, I want to offer up a VERY cute distraction: Peptoc is a hotline (1-707-873-7862, or 1-707-8PEPTOC) where you can hear encouraging messages in English or Spanish from kindergarteners. How sweet is that? (Thanks to the wonderful @newbornwhumperfly for this suggestion!)

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Beloved whump community, I want to know about things that help you when you’re struggling. Please feel free to share them if you want.

And, Moya - we’ll miss you so, so much, even those of us (like me) who didn’t know you well. May your memory be an absolute blessing. <3

(I was going to put this in the tags, but oops, it’s going up here - I really hope this post will be helpful to someone, but it was also helpful to me to build. I feel better in a crisis when I can find a way to help - it’s how I soothe myself when I’m sad or scared. I really hope this doesn’t seem preachy or self-aggrandizing - it’s really just me processing-processing-processing. <3)

One more note: if this post makes you think you might want to follow my blog, you're totally welcome, but you should check out my note here first. This is not a DNI list; it's just a heads-up about my content, which could be inappropriate or triggering for some people.

#whump community #how to be a person in the world #ways to stay afloat #suicide mention cw #suicidality mention cw #self-harm mention cw #resources for taking care of yourself #bel talks #touchstones #sorry another disclaimer but also i know my experiences are not universal #my feelings might come from a really different place than other people's feelings #idk for instance if any of the shit in this post would have been at all useful to moya #but I'm sharing it anyway in case it's useful to SOMEONE

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ephemeral-winter · 7 months

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rip louise glück this poem changed my relationship to history writing

#i know it's the one that everyone posts but i can't talk about the others that changed me so this is what you get #touchstones #rare pic of me in the wild #louise glück

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the12thnightproject · 10 months

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So… i want to do some fun interaction for the first time, show me a pic that describes your oc’s relationship with their s/o (it can be any partner from any fic you have made)

Hi Selena!

Oooh, this is a really interesting question. Thank you for the ask!

Actually I use a touchstone image in every longfic, that helps me when I am writing and editing it. So here are the three that I've used so far in the longfics: Katsuko/Shingen (because they transformed each other).

Okatsu/Mitsunari (because he was so steadfast - once he knew what he wanted, he very patiently, gently, and quietly pursued her... like the tide returning every day).

Katsu/Mitsuhide (I'll explain later, but this one will likely not make sense until more of the fic is uploaded):

#asks #answered #fanfic #writer stuff #touchstones

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gorbalsvampire · 4 months

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What's Wee Tam's deal? Touchstones are important but I feel like we don't talk about them enough on vampblr.

Thomas Tirion Macintyre, first of his name, is Sorcha's longest serving friend, the first friend she made in Scotland. They gravitated to each other in 2013, in the way that small queers who don't quite know that they're queer yet do: the bisexual she/they and the transmasc egg who got each other through figuring their shit out against a backdrop of Very Jesuit School.

Tam is actually the reason Sorcha came back to the UK. Rather than attempt to summarise their story, I shall direct you to this... piece... that @wellharkather and I whipped up, with apologies to John Allison (whose works are shamelessly ripped off for background details). Now he lives in Sorcha's attic. He knows Sorcha's a vampire, he's met her cousin Finlay and her da, but she tries to keep him insulated from most of the Horrors.

Physically, he's a shy little guy who lives in a series of big hoodies. He's even more of a prodigy at drug chemistry than Sorcha (they were lab partners at school). Permanent bed head, acne, and doesn't like going outside. Talks in a near monotone, but he's funny in a "wait are you serious" kind of way. He likes Game of Thrones, RTS games and lo-fi beats to make your own LSD to. He and Sorcha have dun sex a few times, mostly when they're bored or depressed, but there's not a romantic commitment there. They're just ride or die.

The Conviction for which Wee Tam is Touchstone is: "if they look out for you, look out for them."

#vtm #vampire the masquerade #touchstones #oc: wee tam #oc: sorcha dunsirn #thanks for asking!

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rydr--system · 6 months

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ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ ᴛᴏᴜᴄʜsᴛᴏɴᴇs: jack

#touchstones #front || jack

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shelby-bach-books · 1 year

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“Trigger Warning” serves a well-intentioned purpose, but I’m beginning to feel like the term is getting so much wear and tear that it has begun to lose some of its usefulness.

If a trigger is present, the force of emotion is also present, making the trigger a touchstone. When we warn people about a trigger, we are alerting them to potentially painful subject matter, but we do so knowing that the pain isn’t new. It has been around long enough for you to notice it. If you don’t yet have a relationship with that pain, hearing about a similar experience from someone else can often feel like touching a raw nerve.

At the same time, some painful subjects are also necessary subjects.

Grief, for example, is often named as a trigger warning. As I wrote about in People Are Stories-in-Progress, my mother’s father died when she was eighteen, and most of her peers and friends stopped talking about her dad in front of her. But she was always grateful when someone mentioned her loss with kindness—it meant that someone witnessed her pain.

Sometimes too, pain is triggered by something that no one could guess: an object in your own room which reminds you of a harsh memory, a son which was playing during a painful moment, or the same kind of car as the person who recently broke your heart. There are no trigger warnings in parking lots or Spotify, and it’s impossible to reason with a feeling. You can’t simply tell a car or a song that it’s too random and ridiculous to trigger you.

You simply have to weather the pain until you can learn to hold it in a new way.

So, instead of “trigger warnings,” I prefer the term “tender stories.”

Right there in the name, it’s telling you how to approach that story—with tenderness towards yourself, your own pain, and perhaps even someone else’s.

Here’s a video about one of my most random tender stories. The trigger is so random that I doubt it would trigger anyone else (the tags on my license plate), but it brought up memories of COVID and family loss.

youtube

This is part of the Tending Transformation Fatigue series, which you can continue reading here.

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whentherewerebicycles · 2 years

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just had our 3-hour end-of-semester luncheon and it was so so moving and good. they really bonded as a group and the vibe of that cohort is just so earnest and genuinely kind/sweet/humorous. it was a great collection of humans so we were really set up for success on that front, but i also just think that you can do so much as a teacher/mentor to set the tone... and i just love it when kids are ready and willing to buy into what you’re trying to build, and will work with you to create a really joyful, playful space. i just will always maintain that leftist/social justice-focused groups suffer when they think that tackling serious, depressing problems can only be done with grimness and a total lack of humor. the structural problems are so exhausting and the personal injustices people experience can be so dehumanizing that it is just so, so, so necessary to build community spaces that center joy, laughter, and playfulness. i really truly believe that those kinds of spaces can be profoundly re-humanizing for people, and that we are ALL better able to do difficult, sometimes depressing work when we know we have a joyful community behind us & a really solid home base we can return to in order to regroup, process, and find solace in shared laughter.

i have so so so many thoughts about this. like i think even in leftist spaces that seem more touchy-feeling on the surface or purport to be ‘holding space’ for people to process difficult emotions... i think the focus can still be so much on the individual in a way that ends up feeling very me, me, me, and does not actually build a real sense of community. it’s important to create spaces where people can share their experiences, but in my experience some groups or classes seem to see the “stand up and share your trauma while we sympathetically Listen and Honor your story” as the end-all be-all of community building... when actually i feel like that can reinforce stereotype threat and put people in this uncomfortable spot where they are expected to ‘lead’ with their traumatic experience or their marginalized identity, often in ways that overshadow the full, complex, multifaceted person that they are. it can be really isolating! idk for me at least i have zero interest in discussing my life story or unpacking shitty experiences with people i have no reason to trust, who i don’t consider part of my community! and i have just thought a lot (and experimented a lot) in my teaching career with trying to build spaces that look/feel different or that allow us to approach social justice work and individual experience-sharing in different ways.

i feel like after several years of doing this job it’s become obvious to me that you get dramatically better results when you really focus first on building trust and warm, genuine relationships between people -- using laughter and playfulness to defuse tensions and gently subvert people’s expectations of what a Serious Social Justice Space has to look like. the goal for me is to create learning spaces where people are working together to tackle big problems... while also laughing together and telling funny stories about their pets and joking about what’s going on in our lives... while also practicing complex skills and learning to laugh at themselves in a silly, lighthearted when they mess up, and just in general getting really comfortable with acknowledging and showing the messiness and vulnerability of learning new things. if you really invest the time, energy, and care in building those kinds of spaces, then the big, serious, ‘the world can really hurt us, and has hurt many of us, and we want to know now how to build a better world�� conversations & work starts happening within this space where people know each other as human beings and care deeply about each other and are invested in each other’s thriving.

(little side tangent: i feel like as a white teacher who works almost exclusively with students who aren’t white, creating that kind of space can also help establish me as a trustworthy adult who sees them in their full, complex humanity and isn’t mentally boxing kids into categories or leaning heavily on assumptions about their lives or experiences... but that’s a subject for a different essay, lol, as it’s something i think about a lot. but that’s been a transformative shift for me too... and i think what i’ve learned is that there is a MASSIVE difference between a myopic ‘colorblindness’ (as in ‘i don’t see your race/ethnicity/linguistic background/gender identity or how it shapes your lived experience’) and an approach to cross-cultural mentoring that really emphasizes: ‘i want to know and understand you deeply as a person. your lived experiences and your connection to larger communities and your own perception of your identity are all hugely important to knowing and understanding you as a person. but we are not just our identity labels, and i do us both a disservice if i freeze up or get super self-conscious about race or act like we can’t connect as human beings/listen respectfully and lovingly to each other/find common ground/laugh together just because we haven’t had the exact same experiences.’)

i guess i am thinking about all of this because the vibe was so good today, but also because after i spoke they wanted to go around in a circle and talk about what the year had meant to them, and every single one of them said something along the lines of: i’ve never been in an academic space like this before; i didn’t know these spaces could exist here; i didn’t know that you could have a learning environment where it felt like every single person was rooting for me and helping me figure stuff out instead of competing with me or trying to show me up; i would come in feeling drained and overwhelmed and leave feeling energized and capable. WHICH I MEAN god what a teacher’s dream, truly, to have students feel that way about a learning experience, and to see them already spontaneously talking and thinking about the next projects they want to tackle.

the other thing i really loved hearing was that many of them said some version of: ‘you were firm but loving; you pushed me and held me accountable but i knew it was because you cared about me.’ i loved that because i think that was just like, my biggest goal for myself this year -- to get better at holding kids to high expectations and expecting them to work hard/take initiative, but also providing the loving support and structure all human beings need when they are learning how to do something new. i think i really succeeded there. also lol i think the biggest personal success was the student i had to have a Serious Talk with a few weeks ago turned to me at the end of the luncheon and said (this is a QUOTE, i wrote it down as soon as i left lol so i could remember it forever), ‘a lot of times when people try to hold me accountable i’m just like [rolls eyes], whatever, who cares. but with you i felt like you weren’t yelling at me. i felt like i let you down by not living up to what i’d promised to do, and i wanted to figure out how to do better next time.’ that was REALLY nice to hear because i feel like i’d spent some time since that conversation wondering if i’d even gotten through, or feeling like maybe i’d been too harsh/too direct and had damaged the relationship in some way. but it felt like the two of us got this really good moment of closure, and i feel like it was a good lived-experience confirmation for me of like, oh, actually, you can be really direct with kids about what is and isn’t okay and still be loving, and in fact that kind of compassionate directness and boundary-setting can actually be one form of showing love and strengthening an interpersonal relationship, not something that harms the relationship. so that was really good for me and i hope good for her, and i really appreciated that she took the initiative to approach me and say that to me.

anyway idk just: good experience. good year. really good kids. good confirmation that while i am still learning and figuring shit out, i think i am also doing a lot of things really right, and i feel like that’s reflected in the way that students talk to me & what they tell me about how i make them feel. i just think the most powerful factor shaping a teacher/student or mentor/mentee relationship is just this: does the younger person feel like they are seen, heard, and respected by the older person? because if there is respect and trust i think then you can get so much good work done together. and if there isn’t, you can’t. period. one of my kids said ‘i know you just spent a long time talking about the work that we did, and i’m proud of the work that we did, but i feel like our relationships with you were the foundation on which this whole thing is built.’ and THAT is just it, you know, like... that is what i am Trying To Do, is to build these relationships of deep mutual respect and real care, so that kids have a solid foundation or base from which to build and learn and do good work. and then i think if you can model those kinds of relationships and that kind of mutual respect it sends a really powerful message to kids about how we’re trying to be in this space, you know? how we’re going to treat each other. how we’re going to talk to and about each other. how we’re going to work to listen without leaping in to attack someone with our own point of view. if kids see the adult in the space engaging with people in this way (and if they feel for themselves how much more affirming/meaningful those kinds of relationships are) i think it energizes and encourages them to build those kinds of relationships with each other too. and then everybody benefits. blah blah just feeling really moved and happy about the work i get to do. my heart feels really full.

#teaching #mentoring #mw #to think further #year end reflections #end of semester reflections #i can't remember what my tag is for end of year posts lol #touchstones #how! i'm! trying! to! be!

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