eirenical

A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.

This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.

You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind. 

People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.

In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too. 

My tip for turning walks into a brain occupying activity (besides listening to an audiobook or calling somebody) is to learn a little bit about (depending where you walk) plant identification, bird identification, architecture, language, etc. if I’m wondering what each of the 20 different plants in the garden I just passed by are, I’m not thinking about other things. If I’m in a neighborhood where many of the signs are not in my native language, trying to read them and figure them out is another way to keep my mind busy. (You can also do games like “look for things that begin with s” for any object, labeled or unlabeled.)

Similar with manual hobbies. I don’t draw much, but I do a lot of fabric stuff. Straightforward stitching might not be great when anxious (unless I’m doing e.g. a language practice audiobook at the same time), but puzzling out a difficult mending/repair project or planning/starting a new patchwork project (colors, shapes, how I want the pieces to go together, and even piecing them together if it’s a complicated one), can be very mentally occupying.

If I find my mind wandering will listening to audiobooks or podcasts, upping the speed usually helps. If my mind still wanders, then it probably means I’m bored with the thing and should listen to something else.

I hope that helps someone!

Start a new sicktime hobby when you’re still feeling well.

It’s great to do low-energy activities when you’re ill, or distracting activities when you’re anxious, but trying to find, start, or learn a new hobby when you’re already ill/anxious is really hard! So if e.g. you think you’d like to play a video game next time you’re anxious, install Steam and learn the controls for a game now! Don’t wait til you’re in the middle of a panic attack!

Which leads to my next point…

Playing Tetris is a great distraction!

For the "crime" of not wanting to be tracked/have ads pissed into your eyeballs 24/7.

Even if you've paid for the "privilege" of the latter.

IF YOU USE A DESKTOP PC OR LAPTOP, TRY INVIDIOUS

https://invidious.io/

At long last, I'm back, bearing an excerpt from my difanghua Mysterious Lotus Casebook longfic AND some exciting news: namely, I'm hoping to starting posting it, a chapter at a time, on August 9th, the 3 year anniversary of the last episode airing, and of my starting to work on this fic! (This is volume 1 of 2, and it's going to be a little over 170,000 words (I'm at 160k now with 1.5 chapters left), and 25 chapters!)

So, enjoy this excerpt from near-ish to the end, with some teasing, some experiments in providing comfort, and some growing pains in learning to be honest. (And yes, it's volume 1, so dihua are together but difanghua are not yet, as you can probably guess from the excerpt.)

Without further ado, enjoy this excerpt from "Shattering at the Helm!"

**

Xiangyi beamed at Di Feisheng, nodding his approval, his damp eyes shining with pride as though Di Feisheng had done something remarkable instead of just stating a fact. Shrugging, Di Feisheng looked back down at Xiaobao in their arms, whose breath was still coming too fast and uneven. He frowned. There was one more thing he could try. Xiaobao had done it to help him, before the acupoint had shattered, which meant Xiaobao himself found it soothing. How hard could it be to repay him in kind? He shifted his left arm higher up Xiaobao’s back, hovered his hand over the top of Xiaobao’s skull as he tried to figure out the choreography, then rolled his eyes at himself. It couldn’t be that different from petting Huli Jing. And she hadn’t complained, so his technique couldn’t be that bad. Probably.

Di Feisheng exhaled slowly, braced himself for how fucking awkward it would be if he’d misjudged this, and began to stroke Xiaobao’s hair. Huh. It was surprisingly smooth, despite all the crud from the forest that was still stuck in it.

Xiaobao stilled, then let out a low, soft, drawn-out pleased groan, the type Di Feisheng used to pull from Xiangyi’s lips if he’d massaged his neck and shoulders in just the right way when Xiangyi would come to their spars snippy and tense, full of stymied energy from yet another pointlessly infuriating Sigumen meeting. A few more slow strokes to Xiaobao’s hair, and Xiaobao slumped forward, as limp as a noodle, and proceeded to melt even more into their arms until they were the only things keeping him from flopping face-first onto their laps.

Xiangyi tried and failed to stifle his soft, fond chuckles.

The two Big Rules when instructing younger students was- 1. Compliment before Critique 2. Don’t say ‘but’, say ‘now’

Praise kids on what they get right first, especially if they are struggling. Like OP said, kids don’t like to engage with people who make them feel bad. They need encouragement when learning new things.

Number two boils down to this. If you tell a kid a compliment, then say “but you need to fix this”, that ‘but’ completely negates your compliment. It’s gone. It was canceled out like adding a negative to a positive. Using “hey, that punch is looking great, now let’s focus on your stance” doesn’t verbally cancel out the progress they’ve made. It’s like they’ve checked off something on their list of stuff to work on.

here is a map of the path of the eclipse (from timeanddate)

when looking for your birthday, make sure to read the small grey italicized number, not the big orange numbers ; january 14, for example, is on the 25th day of the month of nivôse.

there are three months for each season ; if you're on mobile, you may need to scroll sideways to see the third one.

some birthdays in september are in a special section. that is because the first day of the year is september 22nd, and the last few days of the year before that are special holidays. see :

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again (11167 words)

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - All Media Types Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Combeferre/Courfeyrac, Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Combeferre (Les Misérables), Courfeyrac (Les Misérables), Grantaire (Les Misérables), Enjolras (Les Misérables) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Celebrity Crush, Online Friendship, Twitter, Musicals, Awkward First Times, Social Anxiety, Childhood Friends, Minor Enjolras/Grantaire, Prior Combeferre/Éponine Thénardier, Minor Cosette Fauchelevent/Eponine Thenardier, Combeferre & Grantaire Friendship, Enjolras & Courfeyrac Friendship, Sexual Content, Loneliness

Summary:

Leaning over, Grantaire placed a soft kiss against Combeferre's temple. "Come on. Talk to me." When Combeferre still said nothing, Grantaire gave him a little shake. "You've been sitting on this couch marathoning every movie, television show, and bootlegged musical that Michel de Courfeyrac has been in for the past ten years and you've watched the Phantom movie far more times than can possibly be healthy for such a short span of time. You only do that when you're upset." He gave Combeferre another shake. "Talk to me."

Combeferre frowned and said, "Michel Courfeyrac. He dropped the 'de' as soon as he hit his majority in a protest against his parents' aristocratic decadence and elitism."