🧿Mel🧿

The idea of "anxiety" as a disorder of a person having inappropriate fear responses to harmless or safe things causes a framework where the impact of fear is measured by the person's ability to "function" and outwardly respond in "normal" ways, not their internal experience of suffering.

At a certain level of fear, "pushing through" or "doing it scared" loses its power to alleviate fear and instead creates another acutely negative experience of helplessness that increases the fear in future.

Likewise, if a person is extremely, inescapably afraid, telling them that they must "get better" by learning to tolerate and push through fear encourages dissociation and judgmental, domination-based attitudes toward the body, and reinforces the idea that existence itself is negative and scary

I've been given a lot of ideas for how to sense this distinction from notes on my posts, but i have to refine them.

Characteristics of "manageable" fear where "pushing through" might be productive:

Breathing exercises and other "coping skills" calm you down to some extent.

You still feel somewhat connected and responsive to your surroundings and your body, and you can drift between paying attention to different things.

Your memory of the event feels relatively normal (?)

The negative feelings and bodily symptoms resolve quickly do not last after the event is over.

Characteristics of fear that is extreme and severe enough that it needs to be addressed in a different way:

"Coping skills" do not help you to feel any better.

Paying attention to anything is difficult; it's hard to hold a conversation with someone and comprehend what they are saying to you.

Your memory of the event is extremely fixated on a small detail or aspect of it, or you can't remember the event clearly at all.

You feel like you're being pulled out of your body or that your body is limp and being dragged through the scary thing.

The way the fear is making you feel in your body is extremely distressing and unpleasant in of itself (severe nausea, sensations of suffocation, painful bodily tension)

The sensory memory of the event is extremely vivid and keeps replaying itself in your mind.

You do not experience a sense of relief after the event is over.

Think like, doing something challenging/taking an action vs. getting sick with the flu and being miserable.

Another important thing was being able to look forward to some kind of positive outcome when I did the thing, even if just gaining confidence, vs. the badness of the thing being the only recognizable quality to the experience.

Imagine being given a hammer and a nail and told to hammer the nail through the palm of your hand. It is unlikely that you would be able to "push through" your fear of doing this. If you were in a room and told you wouldn't be allowed to leave until you hammered the nail through your hand, you would probably get more and more frightened and upset the longer you stayed in the room.

It is unlikely that breathing exercises and calm visualizations would help. It is also unlikely that being asked to explore why you feel your fear, or to explain what you imagine will happen when you hammer the nail through your hand, would help.

If your therapist kept prompting you to talk about whether seeing images of the crucified Jesus was causing you to associate nailing your hand with your negative religious experiences, or to defend why you expected nailing your hand to be painful, this would probably make you feel that your therapist fundamentally does not understand your feelings at all.

I think this kind of fear is a distinct KIND of fear. The imminent prospect of harm to the body causes fear that cannot be addressed through changing the afraid person's associations, cognitions, or behaviors, because avoiding harm to the body is a raw survival instinct.

Furthermore, being forced to actively participate in this harm to the body, that is, to behave as though consenting even though under threat of force or duress, removes the person's power to retain some sense of control by fighting back (even if futilely).

Isn't the Saw franchise about something like this? This type of fear is also very often utilized in torture.

Fear of rape or sexual violation evokes this "Saw trap" type of fear in the same way that pain or mutilation do. Therefore, a lot of the fear I experienced in my life was the "saw trap" type of fear: I feared doctors and medical environments because I knew from an early age that doctors touch your anus and genitals, and while I don't specifically remember this happening, I do know I had many, many experiences of completely non-consensual medical procedures: I became terrified of needles at 15 after getting blood drawn forcibly while i was crying and saying "no" repeatedly.

When I learned later in life that I "had to" get a pelvic exam (and was told by sexual health sources on the internet that I could not refuse), I viscerally understood this to be rape. Being told this was, to me, being told that I would be raped over and over again, in a context where I was not allowed to fight back.

This was a completely rational and non-distorted cognition based upon the knowledge I possessed. I had been directly told that I could not refuse, and I had experienced firsthand that I forfeited my bodily autonomy by going into a doctor's office. I did not have a single positive, respectful, or non-coercive experience with a doctor, so there was no reason to doubt.

My opinion is that "Saw trap" fear is completely different from anxiety because the fear is so fundamental, and it cannot be treated with typical therapies for anxiety: it can only be treated with safety.

Tiger found caged in abandoned home gets second chance at wildlife sanctuary: ‘He seems to be so happy’

The estimated 350-pound tiger was transported to the facility, an affiliate of the Humane Society of the United States, on Wednesday afternoon, and is settling in well, Almrud said. There, he will have the chance to roam in enclosures of up to three acres.

Almrud, who estimates him to be about 2 years old, described the moment he first walked onto the grass at the sanctuary as remarkable.

“It was just amazing to see him walk out on grass and to see him explore and have that freedom of movement,” she said. “It was just such a reward and fulfilling to us.”

Now, he spends his days rolling around the grass in glee, Almrud said.

“He comes right up to the fence every time a staff member is present,” she said. “He seems very amenable to our presence.”

The tiger is eating well – a combination of chicken, humanely raised non-processed beef and whole prey complete with organs and bones. It appears that he was being fed chicken, which is what owners of exotic cats often feed them, but chicken alone does not provide the complete nutrition they need to thrive, Almrud said.

In addition, caregivers are tasked with keeping the tiger mentally stimulated by creating “pretend hunting” games and rotating him through different areas so he has access to new smells and environments to explore.

“He seems to happy and content,” Almrud said. “Our staff is just falling in love with him.”

His name is Loki now! In June he celebrated his 7th birthday at the sanctuary where he lives and thrives. Here’s a few pics of the boy:

He escaped his cage

Yes

YES

The tiger is out

infographic credit; see more here

please hold us in your heart. ME itself is not rare (it’s over 5x more common than MS), but it’s really rare to find someone who actually knows what severe ME is! ME has been misrepresented as a vague fatigue syndrome. it is not. it’s a complex multisystem illness with a predictable pattern of neuroimmune crashes that come 24-72 hrs after physical or sensory exertion. it can become progressive and fatal. millions of people with severe ME are isolated and neglected by doctors whose knowledge of ME is based on outdated research.

“hey don’t use eugenics language to describe a thing you don’t like”

1) they reproduce asexually and the children are clones of each parent OR

2) Kermit and Miss Piggy are members of the same sexually dimorphic species, hence the split between their male and female children

In which Captain Amelia (left), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic cat, had hybrid babies with Doctor Doppler (middle), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic dog, whom also gave birth to the babies

post (YESTERDAY) it stopped at

the second Eggman

it's not just "oh we have to protect cis* people" or "you can't disrupt the egg's natural cycle" but "you have to consider gnc/gq gender identities to be fully developed gender identities."

Either way:

flatbread coated in onion flakes ( (assuming you don't have yeast)

cabbage mushroom soup

nettle leaf tea