my new glasses have slightly progressive lenses, and the glasses store assistant warned me that it will take some getting used to, that i gotta take extra care when walking up/down stairs becuase the steps will look closer than they used to, but i haven't had that problem at ALL. is it because i already overcompensate in the field of Careful About Stairs because i'm plagued by anxiety and vivid intrusive thoughts about all the horrible ways i can die while falling down stairs? or maybe i'm overthinking this
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i will either write opens 4 them or do a big starter call later tn or tmrw but if u wanna play w one of them lms and i will dm u ā”Ģ ā”Ģ
OSON PARRY . . . nepo baby actor, not very naturally talented at all but his parents are household names so he keeps booking roles. born and raised to be insufferable! obnoxiously proud, conceited, arrogant. condescending and difficult to work with. his power is his surname. underneath the visage, unbearably insecure and seething w envy. still in the closet, has built a reputation as a womanizer through pr relationships and detached hookups. ego made of glass.Ā ( early to mid 30's, cis man, he/ him, gay + closeted / celeb!verse mostly but bigness of celebrity is flexible :p )
MONA DAVIES-GREEN . . . on the surface, chill off-beat cool girl. hosts a popular podcast reviewing and recommending books. well-read, but has trouble forming to and sticking to her own opinion. underneath, so grossly unbearably anxious. obsessive compulsive disorder/chronophobia related to a constant sense of running out of time - moves with a sense of urgency and freezes when overwhelmed by schedule, which happens often. manages this anxiety with frequent marijuana use and picking up/dropping new passions for brief periods of time.Ā ( mid to late 20's, demi woman, she/they, pan / slice of life, maybe small time influencer/celeb verse?? )
ELIAS . . . from a very very distant future in a neighboring dimension to this one, where he and his younger brother are the last surviving members of their family in a world where an advanced mecha-government body is in the process of assimilating the remaining human population to an electronic hive mind. his brother has gone missing, and elias is using a pocket-sized time traveling device to bounce across time and space in search of him. the device has crashed recently, so elias is biding time in wtvr current universe, working to fix the device and continue his search for his brother, before the mecha-government can beat him there. dorky and wonderstruck by current day. smarty-pants, very technologically adept.Ā phil of the future lookin ass :P ( mid to late 20's, cis man, he/him, pan / slice of life with sci fi elements )
can we putĀ āintrusive thoughtsā on the ever-crowded shelf ofĀ āwords the internet canāt use until they learn what they actually meanā please? because it is genuinely INFURIATING to see tiktokkers be likeĀ āoop shaved my head, the intrusive thoughts won!!ā orĀ āmy intrusive thoughts are telling me to call my ex a cunt and tbh they a pointā
but then when people talk about intrusive thoughts that involve violence to themselves or others, sexual assault, bigotry, animal cruelty, abuse, or any other genuinely horrifying thing, then suddenly itās allĀ āomg if you even have that thought youāre disgusting!ā andĀ āyou wouldnāt think it if you didnāt mean it on some level!ā andĀ āok FINE maybe you canāt help THINKING it but do you HAVE to post about it?ā (and iāve seen that last one commented on videos where people simply mentioned HAVING intrusive thoughts about the topics i just listed. not describing the thoughts in detail or saying what they entailed! just mentioningĀ āi have intrusive thoughts about [x topic]ā and suddenly everyone in their comment is jumping down their throat for making them uncomfortable.)
the point of intrusive thoughts is that they are thoughts you do not like, do not want to have, and do not believe in your logical, thinking brain.Ā āswerve into trafficāĀ āyou could stab themāĀ āwhat if you poisoned the coffee you just gave them and somehow repressed the memoryāĀ āwhat if you secretly want to hurt them, so secretly even YOU donāt know itāĀ āwhat if you ran someone over and didnāt noticeāĀ āwhat if you donāt actually love your mom youāve just fooled yourself into thinking youāre capable of love but really youāre just faking itā
intrusive thoughts are upsetting, scary, and often objectively ridiculous.
theyāre not fun.
(on a similar note, it is genuinely creepy to realize how many people believe in thoughtcrime, even if they donāt realize it.)
i havenāt yapped abt it as much recently but ive been doing pretty well with resisting ocd stuff recently and it feels like a big win :> its still a struggle but i managed to resist my biggest compulsion for (almost) a full week now !!!! and like. idk if iāll be able to keep the streak going bc tomorrow and the day after are going to be pretty stressful days and when im stressed or exhausted i usually give up on resisting much fasterš«£ but iām still optimistic that i might manage to pull thru
since im awake and talking about ocd again - something not a lot of people know is compulsions can be completely mental, it doesnt always manifest in a way another person could notice from the outside
youāll have an intrusive thought; youāll try to analyze it and logic it away, mentally reassuring yourself.Ā āI would never do [x thing]ā, ā[y thing] would not happenā, ā[other person] wouldnt do [thing]ā or even just ādonāt think about thatā. things like that.
but no matter how much logic or reason you use, it doesnt go away, ācause thats not how it works. So you keep repeating whats now become like, a frenzied mantra of re-assurance unable to think about anything else.Ā
and this can go on for hours. or on and off for days (or even longer, unfortunately)
hereās more examples of mental compulsions for the curious:Ā
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I want to talk about some of my hcs/creative choices around Gihunās mental health in In the Weeds.
This is my āGihun could feasible have OCDā thesis
Iāve got the feeling itās gonna be a long post l o l
I this hc originally belongs to @vlkodlac but I looooove the thought that Gihun is drawn to cigarettes in part by how they help him regulate his breathing.
I work with a lot of traumatized dogs and I teach as many of them as I can how to take a deep breath on cue, and that goes a really long way in helping lower arousal and increase cognitive scope (nerd talk for āthe dog can breathe, so the dog can thinkā).
This is useful for people, too. Breathing is a very powerful tool.
I donāt think Gihun ever would have gone to therapy formally, or he might have tried it once but not stuck with it. I think 1. It isnāt of his personal history as far as we know so heād be unlikely to seek it out, and 2. His skin would crawl at the idea of someone else in his head. Not only because of the mind games trauma he has, but because he also has cherished memories he doesnāt want to have violated/gone through with a fine tooth comb/changed by being discussed.
As a person whose life is deeply intertwined with the major and minor impacts of OCD, I think that side of my life creeps into every character I write, but especially so in Gihun. I donāt think it would be hard for him to develop thought distortions, including OCD-like symbols, as a way to process the trauma and grief of the game plus the isolation of his self-imposed exile from the world.
I think he could easily experience obsessions/compulsions around:
1. MEMORIES (or whatever this one is called)
Obsessions/compulsions around memories are really common. He might relive things over and over in his head to make sure he remembers them the same each time, either to remember the positive and keep a person alive that way or to torment himself. Maybe he relives Sangwooās dying moments on repeat night after night to just make sure that Sangwoo put the knife in his neck himself. To just make sure Gihun didnāt kill him.
2. HARM
Gihun is terrified of hurting/losing people. Thatās why he keeps the world at armās length. In letting Junho get close to him in ITW, he thinks heās dooming him. This is why their relationship drives him closer to the gameāit makes him more suicidal, not less, even though Junho could be something really good for him.
3. CONTAMINATION/MORAL
Lumping these two together because thatās how I experience them, and because I could absolutely see Gihun going the same way. I think fears that he is similar to the people who run the game/that he is the garbage they say he is would keep him awake, but beyond that, I think it would distress him so much heād have to perform some kind of ritual about it. One of those rituals is present in ITW: feeling behind his ear to make sure the microchip is really gone, that he didnāt hallucinate cutting it out (this connects to MEMORIES). He also has some compulsive handwashing after hallucinating blood on his hands after handling the money in ch. 8 (youāll see).
okay now that iām several weeks out from it and back to normal. can i just say. the week leading up to my wedding i actually felt pretty chill and relaxed. it wasnāt until AFTER the wedding that all my anxiety hit meālike, first panic attack in months, barely sleeping, etc. and apparently thatās not super uncommon, especially in people with OCD/anxiety.
and idk, i guess im just sharing this as a heads-up to my fellow ocd ppl that sometimes when planning something big (not even necessarily a wedding) it comes AFTER the big event, and thatās normal, and that doesnāt mean you made a mistakeāit means your body and mind were probably holding onto a lot more stress than you even realized, and now itās gotta work its way out of you somehow. and it sucks! but youāre not weird or wrong for it.
"El, do you want to just dump all the info you learned about OCD while on a weeklong research binge, desperately trying to understand what was going on in your brain?"
Why yes, I do. Did you know it has a very high co-morbidity with Tourette's, and a slightly lower co-morbidity with ADHD. One research paper I read posited that they might all spring from a dysfunctional impulse control, though that was pretty much the scientific equivalent of wild guessing, since it was in the conclusion instead of the focus of the research
