Cassiopeia Euphoria

Just wanted to note that everyone has different experiences and different ways of unmasking and these are just some of the ways people unmask and are personal to Lou themselves. If you resonate with these, that’s okay! Just note that everyone unmasks themselves in various ways. Not just these traits.

My day is over whenever I decide.

I am choosing peace over punishment

I am choosing seeds of self-care, -love, and -discipline, over self-abandonment.

I am making better, stronger choices every day—and it shows

I survived another day and my body and mind deserve rest, no matter what it takes.

It can be difficult, but I am still doing everything I can to make that happen.

I am showing up for myself right now by taking deep breaths

[inhale for four/exhale for six, x3]

I have done enough today.

Some days I will do more, some days I will do less. But today, it was enough.

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

your body does pretty much all it's physical rest and repair processes ('stage 4') in the first 4 hours of sleep, so if you've slept for four hours, congratulations the essentials of your physical health are taken care of

the part of the sleep cycle that takes care of your brain and mental health (REM) happens later in the night, hence why waking up too early makes you brain foggy, and why it's so helpful to train yourself to wake up about the same time every morning

we are evolved to wake up several times in the night; we don't usually remember it, but worry and fixation can make us more likely to remember these

sleep under the influence of alcohol is chemically altered and not effective no matter if it helps you sleep - it's fine to have a drunken night of course but don't use alcohol as a sleep aid to 'knock yourself out', being drunk unconscious is not sleep

the best thing you can do for your sleep is follow a routine; go to bed and wake up at the same time most days, and have a 'wind down' routine, preferably including writing down whatever's on your mind to clear it before sleep

for long-term sleep improvement, it's better to wake up at your planned time regardless of sleep quality than to get a full nights' sleep

missing a night of sleep is NOT the disaster certain scaremonger-y sleep 'experts' will tell you - 'slept debt' does NOT exist and you will recover from a missed night of sleep within a few days of normal sleep

meditation is the best alternative to sleep if you're either unable to sleep or feeling the urge to nap (napping is bad for sleep!) - guided ones can help you not to fall asleep, but literally just lying there with your eyes closed and thinking about something neutral is good

acceptance is the best way to alleviate insomnia; do something else, use meditation to supplement that rest, and accept that you aren't sleeping (often, ironically, this will cause you to fall asleep)

Being non-binary? You get dismissed and people thinking you're fake and it actually doesn't exist.