the worst kazoo in the world is lodged in my lungs

They have no kings, no gods, and no laws beyond what's fair and what's funny. They will respect you in their own way, but only on their own terms.

You cannot shame a clown in any way that matters.

You cannot silence the clowns in any way that matters.

The only way to offend a clown is to try to silence them.

but kill them!

Hi! Are you cis in the UK and you'd like to support trans rights? Great!

How: buy a trans flag pin and wear it in public.

Why: chaff is an overwhelming amount of false positives so that when a missile gets close to the plane, it hits the chaff and not the plane.

In practice: the goal is to make it DIFFICULT to identify trans people to target with bathroom bans, and to create many FALSE POSITIVES for businesses.

Basically, you might get accused of being trans and kicked out, because of the badge. You say: I wear the badge because trans rights matter.

You follow up with a letter to the business saying you're fucking furious because some nosy dipshit just tried to play fucking genital police with you in the loos. You know lots of trans people (don't name any, if you do) and you wear the pin in support and you're disgusted at them for allowing this.

Blame the business for allowing the behaviour.

Businesses see that their cis customers are getting bothered over a badge and may clarify trans-inclusive policies, so they can kick out the bathroom botherers instead of nice cis allies.

You only need to buy and wear the badge, and you are protecting trans people. You can be genuinely heroic. Even one cis person doing this helps, and everyone you get to join in helps even more.

Non-affiliated badge link:

https://rainbowandco.uk/collections/trans-pride/products/transgender-pride-flag-badge

Because publishing houses will not continue printing paper books if libraries are their only customers.

I mean, there are lots of ways. I'm not a mental healthcare professional, but here's what I know based on my own life and what close friends have done:

Some people start with medication and a psychiatric diagnosis for anxiety; I think the people who benefit from this a lot are those for whom the actual somatic/physical anxiety reaction is so powerful that it is impossible to separate from the emotional reaction. A lot of people I've known benefit from beta blockers or a similar medication that soothes their nerves and brings down their heart rate, because when your body is in fight-or-flight you can't really use cognitive tools to talk yourself out of anxiety. So that's one direction.

For other people social anxiety is comorbid with autism or another social disorder, which is tricky because in those situations, you often are truly missing social cues and facing a degree of rejection because of it. Often people in this situation need to balance a desire to become MORE socially literate (aka: learn certain social cues and scripts more fluently, paying closer attention to how people respond to them) and addressing social anxiety (which usually means LESS excessive attention paid to social cues). I think for people who have this issue it's more about a mixture of self-acceptance and resilience and also learning a few solid social scripts, identifying what is and isn't a typical social behavior, then also addressing the anxiety itself as a separate thing. So more of a balance between putting yourself in uncomfortable situations and acknowledging you may just have different social needs and working to that while also becoming more confident/less anxious. I don't experience this so I can't speak to it as deeply.

For me, as someone who is socially anxious but is also pretty socially fluent, the thing that DID work was cognitive behavioral therapy. This helps me identify when a thought or feeling is "taking control" of my ability to perceive and act, and gave me tools for sort of triaging my own reactions to things by stepping back and reassessing. From what I have experienced and heard, people whose anxiety is comorbid with OCD and ADHD or have issues with emotional regulation but not social acuity per se benefit from this the most–so when the anxiety is not physical or based on other social difficulties but is much more about emotional responses to social scenarios. I think if you're in that group, yes, letting rejection and discomfort happen until it no longer feels catastrophic–basically exposure therapy.

One thing to watch out for: a few years ago I worked with a therapist to help this and we used the CBT approach, and it was great. Really the first successful therapy experience I've had. I realized that this was because a lot of the time, the more common talk therapy approach can actually do more harm than good for an anxious person, because it encourages the tendency we have to obsess over and unpack social interactions. In particular, for people in their 20s who are maybe bouncing around between therapists, it can be hard for a talk therapist you've just started seeing to determine what is and isn't a cognitive distortion on your part. When I was in high school, I went to talk therapy for my emotional issues; at the time I thought it was depression, but I now realize I was depressed because of my social anxiety/OCD/cognitive distortions. But because I was very well-spoken and experiencing such massive cognitive distortions, I was bringing very distorted social scenarios to my therapist as if they were factual, upsetting realities. So I'd say "my best friends are all secretly gossiping about me behind my back and hate me" and my therapist would say "wow, ok, that's very upsetting, let's talk through that." And she wasn't really able to get me out of my anxiety spiral because of how severe the distortion was, which wasn't her fault, really; since we'd only been to a few sessions together she didn't know I had a tendency to distort reality and I was describing things that could reasonably happen to a high school girl. So I think that's something to watch out for when seeking out therapy: if you know your issue is social anxiety, maybe state that outright, instead of trying to "solve" social scenarios that cause anxiety through talk therapy.

This Post Is Now About Incest. Big Incest™️ Is Forcing You To Think About The Ways In Which Love Can Ruin You. Big Incest™️ Is Forcing You To Consider That Not Being Able To Escape Someone’s Attention Is A Common Factor In Incestuous Abuse. Big-

Right now you might be thinking things like "I need to change myself, I need to change how I think, I need to change who I am".

And the solutions you reach for (that you have been taught to reach for) will be things like "try harder, lock in, focus more, think better, do things better".

That shit doesn't work.

If a problem exists "inside your head", sometimes you can solve it in house, but a lot of the time you cannot and such attempts are wasting energy.

Instead, you need to change what's "outside your head".

Change what clothes you're wearing, take a shower, eat food, dress up nice, change who you're talking to, change what you're eating, put posters on your walls, change your phone wallpaper, change what name people call you, change how you talk about yourself, change how you sleep.

It feels like because it's indirect it'll be less effective, that's not true. That's not how this works.

A lot of the time you'll try to justify like "I need to change what's inside so that I can change what's outside", but this causality is wrong. Changing what's outside will change what's inside much more effectively.

In fact, your "mind" is not this magical special thing, and all that shit around you is part of you. The people around you shape your environment, your environment shapes your behaviors, your behaviors shape your body, your body shapes your mind. It's all continuous.

Aim up the stream of causality and shoot right and you'll minimize the effort needed to achieve the desired result. Practice and you'll get better at doing that. Do it right now and you'll get results fastest.