if one of these just ramps up the anxiety, skip that sense and do the others. trying to pick 5 things i can see is. …not useful. …in a panic attack. but closing my eyes and doing the others does help. it took a very long time before someone suggested skipping sight to me, so i share the insight whenever this method is suggested.
yep. I self-select out of dog friendly offices. if that’s a “benefit”, I can’t work there.
mostly, yeah! it was a very dysfunctional childhood, but we’re all mostly functional adults.
my HS graduation was on a Saturday, and my mom’s attempt was the following Monday. so I guess this has that beat for awful.
chronic depression really distorts your view of things. my mom honestly didn’t think it would taint my graduation or change my plans. sort of, like she was already gone from my life, so she was just trying to wrap things up?
unsurprisingly, even though she wasn’t successful, she still managed to screw me and my younger siblings up for a fair bit. it’s been 20+ years, and only one of us still is in contact with her.
my cat thinks “up” and “down” both mean “get off my lap”.
she also recognizes that when I sit and talk to myself (voice chat) is perfect petting and cuddles time. she’s well known to my therapist and team because of zoom meetings.
and both guinea pigs and the cat have all decided that we do cuddles about 830pm. I thought it was “after work and dinner, sometime before bed”. but the number of times I look up to see what the fuss is, and it’s 830 and all 3 are looking at me expectantly… I assume they figure the time by daylight, because it’s not consistent when I get home.
I had ferrets for a while. they liked to steal and hide things. you learn to check under the couch weekly just so you don’t find things by smell. and hope it’s not somehow inside the couch.
mostly it was the one guy, who preferred his chips and sweets, but knew his sister liked other things. she didn’t eat tomatoes or apples or fruit, but he’d carry that stinky orange down stairs for her, lips peeled back so he didn’t have to taste it too much.
not the OP you replied to, but someone else who loves the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book.
I think 5 days is ambitious. but a lot of what the exercises are doing is training you to see a different way. so it’s not impossible.
someone neurodivergent may struggle to get what the exercises are trying to teach or to reach the point they’re aiming for, so it might take them longer. those more inclined to pick it up faster probably aren’t going to need the exercises in the book; it’s already natural to them.
as we grow up, we learn “this is what a tree looks like, this is a dog looks like, this is what a car looks like”, etc etc. the way we see a new car then goes through that filter of “this is what a car looks like”. those filters are great for quickly identifying things and generally being a human in the world, so you don’t get hit by a car while you’re still figuring out if it is a car.
but those filters get in the way of drawing accurately. your eyes aren’t literally filtering anything; that’s all in your brain. so you need to learn to stop that part of your brain when you draw. that’s the biggest part of being able to draw decently. the rest is technical skill you get with practice.
I’d still recommend the original OP look for an artist collaborator, since children’s books need the illustrations to be as strong as the writing. there’s no way to get there in just 5 days.
I’m sorry for this. I adore seeing men being fathers, being positive adults in the lives of children. my own dad was more absent than not, but my grandfathers taught me a lot about how to be a decent human being, how to have relationships with others.
please don’t be absent for your daughter just because too many people have forgotten men are also capable of being nurturing adults for children.
oh weird, Lexapro failed entirely at managing my anxiety. worked great on the depression side, which meant that dampener of the anxiety wasn’t in effect. spiraled quick, had to email the doc for an emergency appointment.
Effexor (venlaxafine) is the first SNRI I’ve tried and it’s been like magic.
I used to! I picked up a set of Black Co at a used book store to try and loan out. finally didn’t come back after I “lost” the cover and apologized for the state of the book I was loaning. but got another convert, so a win in my book.
in the same vein, I’m so glad they reprinted Glen Cook’s Black Company books, because no one I tried to get interested in them would read them with the old covers. I’m not sure even I did. I certainly can’t imagine I deliberately chose to pick up a book with this cover.
then the correct answer from the Dr should’ve been a referral to a gyno, not “that shouldn’t be treated yet in my medical opinion”.
and she may not have realized it was perimenopause when she went to the Dr. fatigue and migraines alone could easily sap libido and be completely unrelated to anything “down there”.
not the guy you asked, but also .01%. I read. a lot. and I pretty much always have. mostly science fiction and fantasy, but I pick up the occasional nonfiction.
books were always around the house when I was a kid, and we went to the library a lot. my grandma taught me to read before I started school, so that’s about 40 years of exposure.
so nearly everything on that test, I’ve encountered in context and at least have a fuzzy idea what it could mean.
in my experience, there’s not even as much consistency therapist to therapist, psychiatrist to psychiatrist, as there is in the rest of the medical field.
I love my psychiatrist, but what I love is that she’s very much about staying up to date and knowing what she’s prescribing, and probing to see if it’s working (I am a terrible judge the worse off I am. no, really, it’s fine, I can just wake up a little earlier and add a panic attack to my morning routine, don’t change my drugs. huh…ok, since we upped the dose, I haven’t had a panic attack, I guess that was a good idea.)
I like this. in my family, I figured it out at about 3 or 4, promptly told the 2 year old, and broke the reality to the next two before they could even start to believe there was a real Santa.
instead, Santa was the spirit of Christmas, so any of us could be Santa if we gave presents with no expectation of recognition or a return gift. much more Secret Santa than magical man leaving presents.
this did lead to several years where the youngest would give away all their toys, only to then reclaim them after presents were opened. generosity isn’t an easy concept for the pre-schoolers.
she doesn’t drink tea (yet), but she does know head butting my hand when I’m holding a cup is a bad idea!
My cat recognizes the tea kettle whistle as time to get off my lap. “Up” and “Down” mean the same thing (you need to get down so I can get up).
She’s not the brightest, but a warning that she needs to move means I get clawed less.
I knew a guy in real life who got into men’s rights and Men Going Their Own Way nonsense- basically, he had sex so he didn’t qualify for incel, but he held a lot of the same beliefs.
I was the only woman he seemed to have any respect for. He didn’t respect his mother or younger sister, felt they had taken advantage of his dad and were now taking advantage of him. The one girlfriend I know he had, was very manipulative and not a good girlfriend.
I pointed out all the issues with his thinking and his MRA, MGOTW sources multiple times. he’d come back around to being reasonable for a while, then wander back into the toxic wilds of the internet. eventually, I gave up; I can’t be the only voice of reason you bother to listen to.
I live in WA state. the state and county response to covid seemed very informed and measured; they based policy on WHO and CDC recommendations, tried to ramp up and ramp down to make it easier, and were transparent with the numbers they were looking at.
We still saw our medical facilities struggling, especially as one of our neighbor states was not particularly great at covid prevention. so when their situation was bad, a lot of them came over here.
when Roe was overturned and abortion bans started going into place, our leaders realized our neighbor was going to once again flood our medical system. so they started stockpiling abortion drugs and doing what they could to increase support.
they’re also trying to increase public transit, which I appreciate. it’s plagued by corruption and delays, but they are slowly making progress.
you mean the thing where people, often women, have spent decades trying to expose the abuse happening in private homes, and trying to get it addressed?
because that’s what happened. women’s voices, speaking about marital rape and domestic abuse. getting the political power to change laws, to make it illegal, and give domestic victims the means to escape. it also surfaced the child abuse, again. it’s just not been buried again yet.