My Brain Is Trying To Kill Me.

I know I wouldn’t be pushing it to do so if I was home – it’s just this particular situation – and I need to stop being mad about it and let myself rest. And I need to remember that I was running around late last night in ways I would never normally do, and that it’s okay I’m still worn out. 

I’m sure I’m over-anxious as opposed to actually having much to worry about. Half of the downstairs is suddenly gone (furniture taken by friends of the family) so it feels incredibly empty; that will of course be much worse tomorrow, once the piano and my other stuff goes. And I’m still waiting to hear if someone can give me a ride to/from the storage place tomorrow, which is a huge stressor -- somehow everyone’s busy. And I guess I do need to be worried about the check I won’t be able to write because I didn’t think to bring my checkbook... And how I’ll have no cash after tipping the movers... (I’ve got an extra 1k in the bank so I’m not worried about the financing per se, but since I neither have a bank here nor could get to one, I’m stressing). 

Many things inform the body’s decision about when it’s low on memory and when it’s not, and when a brain function is necessary, and when it’s not. Some of those things are our physiological state–the complex set of the signals that say whether we’re relaxed, calm, happy, cold, tired, hungry, in pain, distracted, alarmed, angry, or numb. Those things are all expressed in the body as well as perceived as internal experiences through the brain.

So the more you experience negative emotions that convince your body that SOMETHING IS WRONG, the more energy your brain and body pour into threat response. Energy gets diverted from the “higher” brain functions like abstract thought and planning for the future, and put into things more useful for immediate survival–keeping heart rate and respiration up, muscles tensed for movement, say. More attention gets put into scanning other peoples’ body language for negative messages like anger, contempt, or disdain than into finding any neutral or positive reaction. The memories that come to mind are about more negative things, since those are probably more useful to you if you need to know how to recognize and handle a dangerous situation. 

So what really bugs me about depression and anxiety is that they cause me to perceive the world in a really specific and slanted way–one where there are more threats, people don’t care about me, the future doesn’t have very many possibilities. And inside that mindset, my brain works to literally deny access to things like happiness or hope or feeling loved, because it thinks (poor dumb thing) that I am in a literally life-threatening emergency all the fucking time, so why the fuck am I trying to turn on a theme park ride when it needs to power an emergency shelter.

So the things I’ve come to believe about the world, based on my own observations and experiences, aren’t actually the only way it is possible or necessary to view the world, and if my body and brain calmed down, they’d be able to see the world very differently, and I could behave in different ways and still be safe.

“They’ve already taken away all our land,” Anderson said, referring to the 2.3 million acres the Moapa Band of Paiutes used to control. The tribe noted its creation stories describe how its people entered the mountains and left as sheep. “In essence the sheep are people,” it states. “It is our duty to protect the mountain sheep for if they die, then we die too.”

Separately, ‘Goody’ is short for ‘Goodwife’ (’Mrs.’, essentially), and ‘Two-Shoes’ probably refers to the person being wealthy enough to afford... two shoes. A 1670 source:

Mistress mayoress complained that the pottage was cold; 'And all long of your fiddle-faddle,' quoth she. 'Why, then, Goody Two-shoes, what if it be? Hold you, if you can, your tittle-tattle,' quoth he.

The name is used herein to point out the mayoress' comparative privilege; "Goody" (a corruption of "Goodwife"), being the equivalent of "Mrs." and "Two-shoes", implicitly comparing her to people who have no shoes.

And the phrase came into its current meaning with Goody Two-Shoes:

NYers Jump Turnstiles En Masse To Protest Police Brutality On The Subway

Close to 1,000 people marched through Downtown Brooklyn on Friday night to protest police brutality and a recent crackdown on fare evasion inside the subway system.

The peaceful action, organized by Decolonize This Place, took over major streets around the Barclays Center beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday. Demonstrators eventually made their way underground, jumping the turnstiles en masse at Hoyt–Schermerhorn while chanting: “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D.”

The “emergency action” comes in response to the MTA’s efforts to stop fare-beating, which have led to the deployment of 500 new subway cops across the transit system, among other deterrence measures. Two confrontations caught on video last weekend pushed that frustration to a “boiling point,” organizers said.

In the first instance, last Friday, police were seen pointing their guns at a crowded train car, before tackling 19-year-old Adrian Napier, who was believed to be in possession of a weapon. Napier, who had his hands up throughout the interaction, was found unarmed, and charged only with fare evasion.