Just talking

I am not my mother.

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. 

1. Living Stones

these plants imitate rocks. who does that?

imagine deciding to straight up evolve into rocks as a defense mechanism. i had a whole rant planned but now i’m remembering that i have, in the past, on multiple occasions, daydreamed about being a rock. like that has been a recurring theme in my rich inner fantasy life. i would not forsake the opportunity to evolve into a stone.

2. Hooker’s Lips

ostentatious. flamboyant. vulgar. garish. randy. dare i say whorish? yes. this plant is whorish.

pucker up you hussy

3. Hoya Hearts

overused trope. lacks subtlety and creativity. truly, they just went with the first thought to pop in their head, no brainstorming involved. “ho ho ho i’m just gonna grow into a fucking HEART, that’ll show em!” Needy & basic bitch. looks cute on a desk

4. Lifesaver Plants

manages to be both psychedelic and disapproving. reminiscent of a prudish great aunt–but like, one who did a lot of LSD in the 70s. evidence of an alien lifeform who crash landed and then decided, fuck it, i’m gonna rent a one-story in the midwest and decorate it with vintage wood paneling & floral upholstery. probably smells like stale weed and glass ashtrays

5. Happy Alien Flowers

yes that is their NAME. sort of anticlimactic, but take a gander:

they are absolute sluts for drama, as demonstrated by the face the little hussies pictured above are YELLING AT ME. they bring to mind seagulls engaged in a Shakespearean blood feud. this flowers have committed aggravated manslaughter and probably got away with it too.

6. Bat Plant 

aka Cat’s Whiskers aka Devil Flower. how fucking emo is that??? this plant listens to mcr and is probably the gay cousin. they never got the hang of eyeliner but that doesn’t stop them from trying, bless em. their impetuous devil-may-care persona is hindered by their crippling social anxiety. i’m immensely fond of this plant. they’ll come into their own once they graduate and move away for college, but in the mean time they sit with the tech crew at lunch. you go little Bat Plant! 

 7. Dancing Plants

total band kids. also called Semaphore Plants, bc they look like they’re trying to flag down a plane. nifty fuckers 

Yeah, some do, but Fizz didn't. <3<3<3

Fizzarozzie Week