Cryptid Deity

Like, in my area, out of our plants that grow here, there is a certain group of plants that Exists in Forests, and another group that Exists in Lawns, and another group that Exists in Pastures, and depending on certain factors like how far upland it is and the soil pH, you can get a pretty good sense of what you're going to see and you can find environments like that over and over again, with similar combinations of plants.

And then there are plants that are absolute wildcards, that don't consistently exist anywhere because their habitats are only ever created accidentally. Powerline cuts, abandoned stretches of land, roadsides that are intermittently maintained, patches of land with complicated histories of being used for this and that and the other, disturbed and neglected in various ways.

The Amur Leopard and Clouded Leopard (which recently celebrated its 50th cub born at the zoo!)

The Sumatran Tiger

The Red Ruffed Lemur and Ring-Tailed Lemur

The Cotton-Top Tamarin and White-Cheeked Gibbon

The Colobus Monkey and De Brazza’s Monkey

And the Mexican Spider Monkey!

We're asking our community to stand with us in protecting the animals, habitats, people and future of Nashville Zoo.

A proposed 69,000-square-foot data center is planned for property directly adjacent to the Zoo. While developers claim the facility will have no impact, no environmental studies or impact assessments have been conducted to evaluate potential effects on our animals, visitors, staff, or the surrounding community.

Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water; straining power grids, depleting natural resources, and damaging our watershed. With nothing more than the word of a profit-seeking developer, how are we to know this new data center will not lead to irreversible damage to the animals we exist to protect?

We cannot afford to find out years from now how this facility has negatively impacted our 1.4 million annual visitors, our local community, or the 3,000 animals entrusting us with their care. We are calling on the Nashville community to join us in our fight to stop this data center from being built, now.

I also feel like The Shoelace President is Obama but I'm curious what Tumblr at large thinks

a lot of my ritual behaviors are "checking"

self-guided ocd exposure therapy can be as simple as resisting the urge to check if your door is locked more than once and sitting with the discomfort until it passes without engaging in any reassurance rituals.

it can look like sending an email and resisting the urge to re-read it over and over again obsessing over your wording, sitting with the discomfort until it passes without engaging in any reassurance rituals.

some of my rituals are also "avoidance"

in which case it can look like checking your email inbox you've been obsessively avoiding because you're anxious about receiving a specific email you don't want to see.

and YEP! ☝️

!!!

it might be hard to believe, but learning distress tolerance for things like "checking" with emails and door locks actually prepared me for the Big Ones like harm and sexual OCD themes.

I think this article from 2007 is a good introduction to the basic concepts of exposures:

that SAID, a lot has changed since 2007! the idea that exposure therapy can (or even should) prevent fears from every happening has come into question!

now the conversation about OCD exposure has turned to training distress tolerance:

...rather than aiming for the decline of anxiety (habituation) during exposure, the inhibitory learning approach to ERP teaches people how to be open-minded toward experiencing anxiety and fear when these experiences inevitably show up. Indeed, fear and anxiety (and other emotions in OCD such as disgust or guilt) are universal and even adaptive experiences, not something that need to be “fixed” or gotten rid of. Most importantly, even if they can be unwanted, intense, and distressing, these emotions and thoughts are safe. From an inhibitory learning perspective, fear extinction (and long-term improvement in OCD) depends not only on learning that feared stimuli are safe, but that it is also safe to experience the emotional response that is triggered by these stimuli.

And remember at the end of the day I AM NOT a specialist. I am discussing my own OCD journey and referencing the available material on OCD exposures.

I'm not always right, and I can't know what's best for you.

Which is why I haven't recommended any of the old workbooks I've completed, because some of them are old enough that there are better ones to follow that I haven't gotten to trying yet!

I recommend doing your own reading from OCD-aware organizations:

"am i normal" is not as helpful question to ask as "are intrusive thoughts causing me frequent distress?" and "would my life be better if i could find a way to feel less distress/learn to tolerate the distress?"