guess I need a title

Like, obviously we start with Alanna and SOTL, which is all about pure access. The question here is very simple: should girls get access to the education system? And the answer is equally simple: yes, obviously. This is a book about proving that these girls who have been denied access to the system can, in fact, succeed if given a chance. That girls are just as capable of doing well as boys are, and that they deserve the same opportunities as boys do. We are shown that with enough determination and support from the people close to her, Alanna can push through and beat these people at their own game.

Then we have circle of magic, where we are instead asking ourselves: what about kids who aren’t able to succeed inside that system? Not every kid is Alanna. Some kids are never going to be able to brute force their way through the system as she did. Not because they’re not as smart as her or as determined, but because they’re different. The system is never going to work for them, so the only way forward is to remove them from the system. And in doing that, these kids find success no one in the system ever dreamed possible for them.

Then we get to Kel and protector of the small, and we finally get to ask what in my mind are the real questions. Rather that a pure question of whether she has access to the system, Kel is also questioning the value of the system itself. How it treats the people inside it and those supporting it, like Lalasa. She is looking at the system and instead of accepting it at face value, she asks why it works the way it does, and if it hurts so many people and privileges bad behavior, is this the right way? And if it’s not, what does a better way look like, and what does it take to change it?

Not a biologist, but the evolution of mammals is way more granular than you might expect. Humans are the sole surviving species of the genus Homo, which was a real party before the other ones went extinct. You're in for a fun time.

Domestic cats are believed to be domesticated not from tigers, but from the African wildcat:

Which evolved to be small just because it's sometimes more useful to be small.

And no, hamsters are not off-brand rats. They're part of the rodent order, which includes beavers, moles, capybaras, guinea pigs (yes, also wild) and lots of other fun things:

I'm mad because no one ever talked or explained to me about safety and how that feels or considered "feeling safe" to be a goal, and as a result all I could imagine "getting better" to be like was somehow dissociating or ignoring my fear more.

I feel that the most productive way forward on Medical Fear is getting more chill with needles in the context of like blood draws and IVs and stuff

this is because an IV is used to sedate/knock unconscious, and if I could be knocked unconscious without intense apprehension of that process itself, it would be immensely reassuring that some medical exams/procedures would at least theoretically be possible for me due to the option of being sedated/unconscious

I used to be very fearful of needles in vaccines, I am not anymore due to engineering several experiences to be as "safe-feeling" as possible. First was choosing to go to the pharmacy at the grocery store instead of the doctors' office because being in a doctor's office was so stressful in itself, whereas the grocery store was a familiar place with positive things in it (ice cream). Also, people at the pharmacy are very nice and polite and professional.

I also brought my best friend with me the first time, I think I was 21 then. I don't think the reason it helped was having him there, but rather that I was capable of taking an action to make the experience better, instead of the previous idea of the "badness" of the experience being fundamentally unchangeable and something I have to "just get through."

I think I would still have a strong negative reaction if I was to see the needle before the vaccine, but I always say specifically that I don't want to see it at all and "I am going to cover my eyes now." Most of the things that help seem to be related to the ability to take action of my own volition and to have agency over the interaction.

I can contrast this with an experience 3 years earlier (when I was 18) which I tried to make a positive experience but it was not effective. I think I initially came away with the impression that I had created a positive experience for myself, because it was more positive than before, but it did not reduce my fear at all. This was when I got vaccines as part of a doctor's appointment.

I mainly remember that the vaccines were extremely fucking painful, so painful it was difficult to tolerate the pain, and I'm certain this was because my muscles were incredibly tense. Subsequent experiences (with several different types of vaccines; I got my Covid, HPV vaccines and started getting yearly flu vaccines, plus tetanus booster) have not been like that at all: when there is pain at all it is like being pinched for a brief second or slightly poked with a very sharp pencil.

But after the experience when I was 18 there was new apprehension added to my fear because it had hurt so badly. I had already been in a doctor's office for over an hour, in the waiting room in a horrible state of dread and then getting vitals taken and all of that, which had given the tension time to build up in my body, which had made my muscles tense and made the vaccines physically very painful.

I didn't experience much reduction of my fear after this, whereas I did experience reduction of fear when I tried making a "safe" experience at the pharmacy.

I don't know how to apply this learning to the IV/blood draw type of needles. I know my fear comes from specific traumatic experiences I can remember, on top of the generalized fear of medical professionals having access to my body.

But now that "feeling safe" is something I can comprehend or imagine as possible, it doesn't feel completely unsolvable.

I know when I was 17 or 18 or so I discussed the possibility of doing exposure therapy for my "needle phobia" (that's what I thought it was; the other aspects of my medical fear I had forced out of my consciousness because I couldn't cope with it) but even just talking about it made me so uncomfortable that I never went through with it.

I think I feel more apprehension at the prospect of talking to a therapist about needles than I do about looking at pictures of needles or something like that...actually the thing I would be apprehensive about might be having a therapist there at all.

The concept of exposure therapy in the sense of "creating positive experiences to counteract the negative ones" appeals to me, but I can't get the revulsion out of my head for the Idea Of Exposure Therapy, since the way it was always presented to me was "progressively increase the level of scariness of the thing while using coping skills to reduce your anxiety," which in hindsight probably freaked me out for the reason that none of the coping skills I had been taught ever worked (especially not breathing exercises, fuck breathing exercises), and I had no idea that they weren't working because I couldn't imagine feeling less terrified, only being functional vs. not functional.

@magemulberry okay I think there must be something to the Deer Hitler Method because back at the beginning of covid there were several tiktoks or short videos about the Covid vaccine that I think might have helped me to relax my feelings about vaccines

Specifically there was one where a dude got all 5 types of covid vaccines and it gave him superpowers which he used for evil. This one was also good for non-scary vaccine imagery because the shot was represented by the guy being poked with a pen XD

I think the reason this one specifically was helpful is that it was playfully imagining something outside my overwhelmingly coercion-irradiated experience of medical things. The guy in the skit was getting the vaccine because he had an absurd and funny ulterior motive.

I can at least identify some things that DON'T work. I know that for me, distraction is worse than useless.

Is it even POSSIBLE to distract me from something happening in my body? The idea that doing another activity or taking in another stimulus will make a body experience I'm already incredibly mentally honed in on less intense or less salient makes no sense at all to me. "scary" stimuli are automatically prioritized in terms of salience, so like, what is distraction supposed to so.

It is possible this is an autism thing, and/or an inherent thing about me. I had a conversation with some people about it and they described being able to put themselves mentally "elsewhere" during an uncomfortable or nerve-wracking body experience, like mildly dissociating from the body and shifting focus to something in the mind to lower the intensity of the body experience.

I don't think I have the ability to do this. I've never experienced this.

(During my traumatizing blood draw I had music to play during the procedure, and I remember pulling up the track I wanted to play, but I only realized afterward that the music had never actually started playing. I don't think the music would have helped much; the thought of having music playing during something stressful makes me feel more stressed.)

I don't think I can start by doing the thing itself. All the suggestions I get in the comments for comforting objects and distractions are nice, but I escalate RAPIDLY to an "animal gnawing off its own leg to escape a trap" level of fear.

After the major traumatic experience when I was 15, I started "re-experiencing" sensations from the blood draw whenever I smelled rubbing alcohol. This tells me smell of rubbing alcohol and the sensation of it on the skin is a major trigger, but I don't think it would get out of control if I experimented with the little alcohol wipes they use with needles in my own time, to feel safe with those sensations. Would disarming this trigger help? I'm not sure.

I've tried looking at videos of people donating blood (I found one while exploring Random Youtube, so that was already in my library; the candidness and low quality of the video helped it feel a little more non-threatening) and generally feel fine up until the person starts pressing/squeezing on the donor's inner elbow to find a vein, and then I shudder and get this cringe/revulsion reaction.

The "palpating a vein" part of the process feels more intrinsically connected to where the fear lives, as opposed to just being a trigger, probably because it involves being touched and it feels vulnerable and grosses me out. There is something a little unsettling about having it highlighted how soft and vulnerable your body is in that way. I think I might need to create a safe experience with this by itself, with no needle.

The needle itself is the most inflexibly horror-inducing aspect, but the horror can probably be broken down:

The revulsion towards having something sharp penetrating into your body is probably hardwired, since puncture wounds are normally dangerous.

It is particularly frightening to have no idea how much pain to expect, because during my traumatic experience they did use some kind of topical anesthetic and the smallest possible needle, so I have no idea how much pain a larger needle and no anesthetic would cause. I feel incredibly embarrassed about asking for either of those things (embarrassment probably connected to my feelings of helplessness during the trauma)

Having a needle in my elbow is distressing as an idea, maybe because it's a joint and I feel like if I bend my arm something gory will happen, or because it just feels like a delicate/fragile area, or because of some other wrongness I can't articulate.

Volunteering at a blood drive sounds like potentially a good idea, but I have no idea how to arrange this.

Making an appointment with the intent to back out and then leaving could potentially work; the main risk would be freezing up on saying "no thanks, I'm backing out/leaving," getting too far into the process (actually seeing needle/equipment when I'm not mentally prepared for that) and then getting mega triggered. I'd have to have a really clear script for myself, and I'd still be apprehensive about my requests coming out as crying/begging/whimpering. I would feel humiliated.

I'm probing that last bullet-point a little more: I feel doubtful about my ability to ask the procedure to stop and have that be honored.

I mean, obvious. Literally the reason I'm like this is that when I was a kid I was terrified and asked them to stop and they didn't stop.

I'm coming at this like defusing a bomb, trying to cut all the wires in the right order: breaking everything down into parts, deconstructing the fear and how each individual part could be neutralized.

It's hard because blood draws are considered to be so "minor" by some people, and I absorbed that idea, and I have apprehension about finding someone willing to humor me on making positive experiences with deconstructed components of the blood draw (having someone palpate the vein, but no needle; saying no and having that listened to).

I know that the key component of the trauma is the force/lack of autonomy, but there's also a feeling of...the person doing the procedure being a threat? Like I can't trust them to care about my physical or mental wellbeing.

I think some of the physical revulsion of having a needle stuck in my body, like the instinctive shudder of "nope i don't want this happening to my body", comes from my foundational experiences with medical care feeling violent. So there's not really a sense of caretaking/this is being done carefully with minimal damage and harm, it's the same kind of gut clenching body-instinct as being gouged with sharp metal.

Is there no one who can accompany you to these things? To be your mobile comfort object?

I have no room to speak. Every 6 months I get let's just say a massive amount of blood drawn and then an IV infusion for the MS. I have gotten extremely blase' about the process. Because I was not raised to worship the fucking white coat, I have no problem in telling staff exactly where they need to put it. But I have big obvious easily accessible veins.

But my child had an extremely bad reaction to a proposed blood draw when he was in kindergarten and instead of holding him down and forcing him to go through with it, we left. I'm sorry that that was not possible for you.

Imagine a human leaving her kid with an alien friend because her SO is sick and none of her human crewmates are able to act as babysitter and she’s got an important meeting. So she goes to the meeting and the alien takes her kid to one of the rooms in the ship that acts as a sort of play area.

Then, when the human comes out of the meeting, she picks her phone up and sees that she has some missed calls…

1st call: “Hey, Katie, it’s me, Grit. I know you’re probably in the meeting by now and can’t answer your phone, but I was just wondering… Jackie’s been chasing the other kids a lot, is she hunting them? Is that part of the whole predatory instincts thing? They all seem to be having fun— at least I think so, they’re all making that weird noise you guys make— but I just thought I’d let you know. And, um, listen… she’s not going to try and eat the ones she catches, is she?”

2nd call: “Hi, Katie, Grit again— look, I know that you guys are descended from tree climbing mammals and so your offspring need climbing equipment to satisfy those instincts— but there’s no way she’s supposed to be that high, right? None of the other parents are doing anything and I can’t go up and get her down because my hooves can’t get a grip on the frame. She’s right on top and— NO!<incomprehensible noises that sound like a cross between the moo of a cow and the bray of a donkey>— okay, so she’s swinging from the bars. One of the other humans just explained that that’s normal. He’s offered me some coffee, but I said no because I’m pretty sure that stuff’s toxic. I’ll try not to call again unless there is an emergency.”

3rd call: “I’m so sorry, Jackie’s been injured. She tripped over and seems to have lost a layer of skin from her knee. She’s making these noises and there’s liquid coming from her eye sockets and I don’t know what to do! Please pick up! There’s blood and the coffee offering human keeps saying she should suck the blood out or something. Is that a thing? Does your species’ saliva have healing properties? Shoud I call a medic?! Please pick up!”