Sun

Last week, Lunar New Year rolled around, and with it, so much breathtaking art here on our dashboards. Happy Year of the Snake to you all. May this one bring some good things your way, and may this little collection of Lunar New Year sneks be one of those things.

@poorly-drawn-mdzs:

@jdebbiel:

@mochiwei:

@kayandp:

@birdpaladin:

@meredithmcclaren:

@passionpeachy:

@shionaster:

@snowlattes:

@sonshine-arts:

@elbarkla:

@sarakipin:

@dominiqueramseyart:

@sylvrndoodles:

@poqu:

@zeldacw:

@moodboardmix:

@ennuisaur:

@avakkins-alter:

@gingerhaole:

@yuumei-art:

@vickychendraws:

@silentmight:

@kkartist:

@buboplague:

@glitchphotography:

Blisters and bedrock gang meeting after Silco stole a sack of bread✌️✌️

OH! I KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS!

There’s a WIRED article that explains the history behind this practice. 

Basically, this guy named Jeffrey Mitchell had a traumatic experience, then after months of PTSD, he told a confidant about the event that traumatized him. Retelling the event to a confidant was so cathartic for Mitchell that his PTSD went away after. He did a bunch of research to see if his personal experience of catharsis and relief could be replicated in other people suffering from PTSD. Years later he published a paper proposing a formalized psychiatric treatment revolving around this idea that expressing a traumatic experience helps relieve it. The paper was so influential that the whole psychiatric community adopted “critical incident stress debriefing” (CISD) as a standard treatment for PTSD.

Unfortunately … it’s bullshit.

Not only does the CISD treatment program Mitchell came up with not help the majority of patients who try it, but it actually makes PTSD worse in the majority of patients who try it.

The WIRED article explains why:

CISD misapprehends how memory works…. Once a memory is formed, we assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.

None of this is true. In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don’t remain constant. 

…the very act of remembering changes the memory itself. New research is showing that every time we recall an event, the structure of that memory in the brain is altered in light of the present moment, warped by our current feelings and knowledge. 

Basically, Mitchell waited until he had some emotional distance before trying to recall the memory, and he had full control of the situation. It was fully his decision. Nobody was pressuring him to talk about it. So he felt safe. Thinking about the memory from a place of safety allowed his brain to re-contextualize the memory as harmless.

Conversely, pressuring a patient to recall a traumatic memory, particularly when it’s still fresh in their minds, makes the patient feel very unsafe. Recalling a bad memory in this unsafe context only serves to re-traumatize the patient. 

Love-bombing: A manipulation tactic of increasing affection and grand gestures before or after doing something abusive, specifically to weasel one's way out of consequences.

What it is not: A streak of affection and generosity towards friends/loved ones.

Trauma-bonding: Knowingly traumatizing someone to take advantage of their vulnerable state, to then act like the "hero" or the one who cheers them up.

What it is not: Bonding over similar traumas.

Gaslighting: *Knowingly* convincing someone they cannot trust their own perception of a situation in pursuit of one's own narrative.

What it is not: Misaligned perception of events.

Narcissist: Someone afflicted with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a traumagenic cluster B disorder, that struggles with self-obsession, paranoia, craving validity from the public, delusions of grandeur, and social disconnection.

It is not: Your rubbish ex that cheated on you.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

She’s technically a monster too. She might not look it at first glance and seems mostly human, but it isn’t deniable even despite her looks compared to the other monsters. 

But she realizes that she is still not like the rest of the monsters either and may not have entirely the same experiences as them, which is why she feels that she might not belong to or deserve to go to the support group. By sometimes passing as human, she feels she isn’t worthy of the space. 

The sad reality though is even though she’s mostly human in appearance, that tail she has undeniably would still cause her some struggle. Humans are still gonna look at that tail and think she’s a freak. There are probably still accommodations she needs because of the tail that she may still struggle to have access to. Even if it is just the tail, that tail is still enough to other her from humans and cause her problems and discrimination. 

She should get to belong in that support group even if she gets told she’s not monster “enough”. She still shares some of the same struggles as them that are caused by being a monster, and needs support. 

“Hamas shouldn’t have attacked”

🙃

https://www.btselem.org

I found them because I had seen someone say that the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis fatalities since 2005 was 23:1 and i was wondering where the data for that originally came from. This website keeps such detailed accounts of fatalities, home destruction, and other human rights violations. It also has an interactive map that shows the timeline of the occupation, talks about different communities and settlements, shows check points, and more.

How many more innocent civilians have to be killed by Israel before you condemn that for it?

That is a genocide.

That this is a crime on all accounts.