skinny people please reblog this one

here are a few other "secret" dashboards:

Posts from your "crushes"

"What you missed" (will be empty if you already visit Tumblr every day)

"Trending"

Visual Memories: Images, three dimensional technicolour images, black and white, foggy or clear.

Auditory Memories: Sounds like music, breathing, doors shutting, footsteps.

Emotional Memories: Feelings of distress, hopelessness, rage, terror, dread, danger or a complete lack of feelings (numbness).

Body Memories: Physical sensations including pain, nausea, gagging sensation, difficulty swallowing, feeling restricted, difficulty breathing.

Sensory Memories: Experiences such as particular smells or tastes.

Most emotional flashbacks do not have a visual or memory component to them, the triggered individual rarely realizes that she is re-experiencing a traumatic time from childhood. Feelings of being helpless and hopeless are often types of emotional flashbacks because they might have felt that there was no escape from their trauma. An extreme emotional reaction that doesn’t fit the situation may also be a clear sign of a flashback because it is bringing up feelings from the past.

coping with flashbacks, but here are some ideas that you may find useful:

Find a safe quiet place where you can sit down.

Tell yourself that you are having a flashback, that this is a memory from the past and that you can take care of yourself in the present.

Remember that you can choose whether to remember and re-feel.

You might want to say to yourself “I’ll let that memory pass by.”

Breathe slowly and deeply. Learn to breathe from your diaphragm; put your hand there just below your navel and breathe so that your hand gets pushed up and down. Often when we are surprised or scared, we breathe more rapidly and reduce our oxygen intake. Lack of oxygen can enhance feelings of panic: it can result in pounding in the head, tightness, feeling faint, shakiness and dizziness. If you count slowly to five as you breathe out, it will help slow your breathing down and will calm you physiologically.

Imagine that the images that you see are on a TV screen. Turn the sound down, turn it up again, then turn the TV off so that the images fade away.

Actively ground yourself in the present:

Stamp your feet; grind them around on the floor to remind yourself where you are now.

Look around, notice what is going in your immediate vicinity: name the people, the place, the furniture, the lay of the land, colours, patterns, etc.

Listen to the sounds around you: the traffic, voices, the washing machine, etc.

Feel your body, notice how you are sitting, your clothes, feel the chair or floor supporting you.

If flashbacks are particularly common, it can be a useful strategy to always wear items that did not exist back then, things that ground you in your current life, a watch, flash drive, coloured wrist band.

Focus your attention on remembering something challenging, such as the lyrics to a particular song, friends birthdays or a favourite poem.

Okay, girls, the moment has arrived. I felt like compiling some of the great moments the Kratt team has, highlighting their positive relationship. Without further ado, here we go.

"A Treasure Hunt Planned for Months"

In the Tenrex episode, Chris organized a treasure hunt for his crew. It took a lot of time searching, planning, building unreliable mechanics, and preparing, all to make his friends happy, especially his brother, who ended up enjoying the whole adventure the most. In the end, Chris even decided to take care of the other pending tasks so his friends could swim in the river and have fun after a long day. No one can tell me that isn't incredibly sweet of him.

"A Recipe for a friend"

It's common to see Jimmy cooking for the rest of the crew, from brownies to cupcakes and sandwiches. Having a clear penchant for baking, in one episode Koki mentions that she's waiting for her zucchini plants to grow so Jimmy can bake her chocolate zucchini bread. What I found adorable is that it implies Jimmy is willing to prepare certain dishes that are to the particular taste of a specific crew member. I would honestly love to know what other specific desserts the rest of the crew enjoys.

"Guys, Jimmy's scared."

We all know the brothers are animal lovers, and any little-documented animal sighting fascinates them so much that they don't usually perceive it negatively, but rather as a privilege to observe. The problem arises when Jimmy finds himself caught in the middle of a fight between a gator and a crocodile.

Hence, we encounter another characteristic of the Kratts: they tend to get easily distracted when faced with one of these rare sightings and often lose their judgment of the danger. That's when Aviva intervenes, telling the guys that Jimmy was scared.

That's when the siblings refocus and take action to rescue Jimmy. This is a sweet moment between them for two reasons:

Aviva is looking out for Jimmy's physical and emotional well-being, and the siblings are reflecting on the fact that he wasn't enjoying being caught in the middle of the confrontation and going to his rescue. Because even if they were enjoying the experience, they know how to draw a line when one of their friends is genuinely distressed.

"They know I panic"

In the episode where the girls are captured by termites, Jimmy mentions to the siblings that Koki and Aviva always tell him when they're leaving because they know he panics if they don't. This shows us that the girls maintain this habit so as not to scare Jimmy, who tends to have a more nervous personality. It's also sweet that the first thing Martin does when he sees him worried is to approach him to offer support.

"A Little Gift"

In the Halloween special, the two brothers travel to different locations to find animals to inspire their costumes. Martin was searching for a Goliath tarantula, and Chris was looking for a vampire bat. However, they end up finding the animal their brother was looking for, and instead of letting it go, they both secretly decide to work with Aviva to help their brother get his costume. Even though none of them found the animal they were looking for, they still ended up getting their costumes. All for their good brother. Honestly? Adorable.

The part in Amazin’ Amazon Adventure when they got so distracted by the otters that they sunk their boat was inspired by that actually happening to them in real life.

The footage ended up in the Pilot episode for Kratt’s Creatures. I tried to find it, but I don't know which episode is the pilot, so if anybody knows which episode that is I'd be very grateful.

I highly recommend you read the rest of the interview, there’s lots of other cool information in there, plus the website actually has a video of part of the interview where you can actually listen to Martin talk about the giant river otters and Chris talks about an encounter he had with a Tasmanian devil.

interesting character backstories

because "my parents hit me or force me to be perfect" won't cut it for every character in the cast

-characters who grew up poor. poverty is traumatizing, people. i wanna see characters who never ask for anything, count dollars and coins, freak out when the bill isn't split fairly and immediately suspect bed bugs when someone says they're itchy. and mention the ugly stuff too. smelling bad and having water stains on the walls. ice cream for dinner and not eating breakfast. lights going out and fourteen year olds supporting a family of five.

-characters who were neglected. not physically abused, neglected. who don't understand why people care when they don't show up, or seem kind of down today, or leave a party without saying goodbye. who are too independent for their own good. who can't think of anything to say when asked to describe their parents. who are okay with being lonely. who always feel lonely. who get uncomfortable if you even ask them how their day was. who does that?

-characters who were smothered. who were treated like a toddler well into their teens. who were practically stalked by their own parents, never allowed a moment of privacy. who were constantly belittled and denied their autonomy as the adults in their life made every decision for them. regardless of how loved they truly were, this is abuse. this could go in two diverging directions: end result of a very guarded, mature character feeling a constant need to prove themself, or end result of a passive, immature character who requires attention, praise and constant assistance. both have extremely low self-esteem.

-characters who are fundamentally different from their family. maybe they're queer, or adopted, or disabled, or aren't fully related to the rest of them (bonus points if they aren't the same race as their family). characters who watch like a ghost as everyone else smiles and bonds. and maybe it's their fault that they're like this, or maybe it's their fault for not reaching out to the family themself, but... nobody else had to ask for it.

On January 22nd, as many of you know, I went to Wild Kratts Live and met the Kratt Brothers! I’m slowly sharing my experience with you all, and one of the highlights of meeting them was that I learned creature facts from them firsthand!

One fact I learned was that the live action portion of the cursed Wild Ponies episode was filmed in Chincoteague, Virginia, which I discuss in detail in this post!

Another fact that I learned was about the monarch butterfly episode, Voyage of the Butterflier XT! And I can honestly say this was my favorite fact that the bros shared!

When meeting Martin he asked me what my favorite animal was and I said butterflies; I told him I liked monarchs and different types of swallowtails specifically. Upon hearing this, Martin smiled and I could see him become contemplative for a moment before he replied with, “the monarch episode took a long time to animate” because of all the butterflies that were needed/created for the episode.

Which, upon looking at screenshots/clips from the episode makes so much sense. There are monarch butterflies everywhere! They are flying in the air, they are covering every single tree that we can see, and all of them were individually animated, which is so crazy and cool! And the animation team did not take an easy out in animating the monarchs: every single butterfly is beautifully animated, from the ones shown up close to the ones seen from a distance.

The monarch butterfly episode is the 9th episode of Season One of Wild Kratts, so it is a very early episode in the series. And the fact that such time and dedication was put into animating every single butterfly shows the level of attention and detail that was put into making the first season of the show (and subsequent seasons) a success.

This episode in particular is so special to me because of how I connect with butterflies; they are symbolic of transformation, freedom, and rebirth which are all things I have experienced in my life since I became a fan of Wild Kratts.