Hankenstein

Most people take a gag as permission to be loud. Either because they take it as a challenge "try to silence me, I'll show you" or because they think it's going to muffle noise so they're free to be noisy. They'll be unintelligible of course but they will make all types of pretty noises.

Expectation is an incredibly powerful tool you can make use of. People like patterns, people like predictability, they like knowing what's going to happen. So make rules and follow them, make patterns and keep to them, be predictable and your sub will feel safe and comfortable with you, they will trust you more if they know what you're going to do and how you're going to react.

something something dykes on bikes 🏍️🌈💨 (because it's not pride without some l e a t h e r)

“Beating” mental illness is actually the norm, not the exception. Most people who have a major depressive episode never have another one. 80% of people who survive their first suicide attempt never make a second attempt. 93% of Borderline Personality Disorder patients achieve remission. Up to 74% of people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder achieve significant clinical improvement in their symptoms, and 20% achieve full remission. Half of Generalized Anxiety Disorder patients achieve remission after the acute phase of treatment. Even disorders with relatively low rates of remission - bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoid personality disorder - generally become milder and easier to manage as you age. Psychiatric symptoms tend to peak in your 20s and generally drop off as you get older, especially if you seek treatment. 

This is why the narratives we use to talk about mental illness matter so much. Right now, the dominant narrative is that mental illness is “an imbalance in the brain” and that it’s largely something that people are born with. There are upsides and downsides to this. The upside is that it promotes the idea that mental illness is not the ill person’s fault, and it helps us understand that mental illness can impact anyone, regardless of their life circumstances. The downside, however, is that it’s sort of given us this idea that mental illness is inborn and unchangeable. People have taken on the idea that “that’s just how my brain is”, when the reality is that, for most people, mental illness is less of a stable trait for them, and more of just a shitty thing that they are going through for a little while. The idea that mental illness is just “in your brain” also erases the very real connection between your life circumstances and your mental health - while it’s very true that a wealthy person in a happy marriage can become depressed, it’s also very true that living in poor conditions and being in an abusive marriage can be the cause of depression, and that improving your life circumstances can lessen or eliminate mental health conditions. 

If you have a mental health condition, it’s very important that you not resign yourself to the idea that you’re going to be like this forever. Chances are, you won’t. Even if you have a mental health condition that is associated with low rates of remission, it is possible to make leaps and bounds in your functioning, and to get to a point where managing your condition becomes second nature to you. Our understanding of mental illness is improving every year, and new therapies and treatments are becoming available all the time. If you seek treatment and do your best to manage your condition, you have every reason to believe that you will make huge improvements. 

I want to go get a vape. There's a shop just on the other side of my house, and people leave their vape boxes in the alleyway all the time, making me think "Fuck it would be really nice to just walk 100 meters, spend thirty bucks, and have some delicious nicotine all to myself. I'll just vape until this urge is sated." ok great. And then what?

Then I have a vape. One of those stupid disposable ones that are INCREDIBLY strong. That are so moreish that I find it hard to stop. That give me head spins. That would last just long enough to completely reset my physical addiction to nicotine and make that itchy feeling in my brain ten times worse. Either I smoke the thing until it's finished, which would be habit-forming, or I just smoke it for an hour. AND THEN WHAT? Get rid of it? Throw a live battery in the bin? Wait until I see one of my friends that vapes and palm it off to them? Go for a walk and leave it on a bus stop bench somewhere (which is what I used to do.) Then I've just thrown thirty bucks (possibly fifty, idk how much they cost anymore) into the BIN for an afternoon of nicotine that makes my head spin.

So the seductive little voice that says, it would be so easy, we're just going to do it a little bit, it won't hurt, you can go by a vape... it doesn't have any good answers to "AND THEN WHAT?!" And so asking that, allows me to urge surf and get through it, because whilst I might want the hit of nicotine, I don't want all the shit that comes after it.

I have the same little story to "and then what" when the urge to get a box of 50 nangs hits me as well. Funnily enough, my addiction gremlin can't convince me that there's anything good after a box of fifty nangs. It's amazing the way that my pathways have been rewritten and my strength and resilience has grown. Because there was NEVER a good tale waiting after I got high. The "and then what" answer was ALWAYS "you'll feel a whole variety of shitty things," but I just wasn't able to GET to that answer, the screaming addiction urges didn't CARE how I was going to feel on the other side of being high, they just needed to be high NOW.