Kiana Khansmith
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I wonder WHY breathing exercises have always been such a dogshit "coping skill" for me.
It just feels so incredibly wrong to try to force my breaths to be a certain length. Usually, when I've tried them, it gives me the sense that I'm not getting enough air or I'm starting to suffocate, which slowly increases the longer I do the breathing exercises, and it's a very stressful feeling.
Last time I tried doing breathing exercises to relax, my back and torso became slowly more and more and more tense and locked up and tight until my back was very painful. It was like I was clenching down with all the muscles of my body to try to make the breaths start and end when they were supposed to.
It sucks because therapists usually think "breathing exercises" are the gold standard for anxiety coping skills, and I had one therapist tell me that it was impossible that they didn't work because scientifically, you Cannot have a fear/stress response if you're doing breathing exercises. Lady, if it was that easy no one would need therapy. Also I guess I'm some kind of alien or something.
In yoga class, I think I finally "got" some of the benefits of what breathing exercises were supposed to do from paying attention to breathing in different poses and feeling how that biological cycle affects the parts of the body that are holding the pose. That isn't trying to control the breathing though.
Also, it's engaging the whole body: trying to focus on my breathing while not doing anything else I think causes that tension to build in my muscles.
I'm just thinking like. I notice that my breaths become faster and shallower when I'm stressed or afraid, but when I try to force myself to breathe slowly, it's like my body is wrestling against me.
I think it's much easier and less pain- and panic-inducing to do breathing exercises when I'm already calm?
I kept trying to do breathing exercises for years after I knew they didn't work for me. I think I had the idea from therapy that coping skills weren't necessarily supposed to feel good or different or helpful at all, and that I had to keep doing them to "get better" which was something independent from "feeling better."
ive been wondering when id have my bananas arent supposed to be spicy moment but i cannot fucking believe this
what do you mean breathing exercises arent supposed to make you feel out of breath???? what???
also why the fuck did i need to be told the feel better exercise is supposed to make me. feel better? what went wrong here. genuinely asking.
jesus. what a revelation.
Reading everything above, I am having... several questions. Mostly about how exactly breathing techniques are taught, and also how these instructions are interpreted.
There's a few reasons why breath control is considered a gold standard in calming people down: 1) requires no additional tools or outside intervention, 2) a practice prevalent in many cultures and thus something most patients are already familiar with the idea, and 3) a solidly-proven and well-researched quickest method to regain homeostasis.
It is not supposed to make you feel worse, emotionally or physically, because it's acting directly upon your nervous system to change feedback patterns - I'm going to link as reference the following Wikipedia articles for anyone to read at their leisure:
Conscious breathing
Control of ventilation
Hyperventilation syndrome
I have no idea what anyone is telling a patient to make this literally painful for them, but you're supposed to slowly ease into a completely controlled state of breathing - not a single person is able to go from panicking to calm by ordering themselves to do so, regardless of general mental health. If that were the case then it would not be a state of panic.
Secondly, sometimes therapists are far too by the book, and I'm not sure if it's been recommending to purposefully tense your muscles from head to toe before attempting to regulate your breathing. This helps some people but does not help others; try it out and see if it helps you, because then at least you'll know.
The reason why yoga class was helping to make it click is because regulating your breathing is often done in conjunction with regulated movement, i.e. martial arts. (Yoga is a type of martial arts, for clarification.) The entire point of martial arts is to have good command over one's body, so at least a good third of it is learning exactly that before you get to any of the stereotypical martial part of martial arts.
See, this is more of the stuff I've always been told and never understood. I "get" the physiological basis of how it "should" work, but the way it feels in my body is distressing.
okay. pausing in typing this to sit up straight and do the breathing exercise thing for a few cycles so I can vividly describe what happens.
Breathing in deeply feels like I'm filling up my lungs too much, like I'm trying to engage the wall of my abdomen to get my breath to deepen but it feels wrong. I'm trying to feel that expansion in my stomach, but it just does not feel right. Sometimes there's a "locking up" that happens in my shoulders here.
Holding my breath is just against what my body instinctively wants to do. I feel myself tense up trying to stop from breathing out too soon, and sometimes there's this kind of locking-up feeling in my throat and it's like I almost swallow air trying to stop the exhale from happening. I keep accidentally skipping the hold breath part because the urge to exhale is too strong.
Breathing out for longer than my inhale makes me feel like I'm just trying to wheeze air out of my already airless lungs at the tail end of the breath, which also tenses up my body. It feels wrong to try to empty out all the air from my lungs to that extent, and there's kind of a "gulping" feeling or a spasm in my throat. Like I'm trying to actually flatten all the air out of my chest.
Then of course it seems like the problem is I need to exhale more slowly, but trying to control the length of my breaths more consciously makes the muscles of my back, stomach, ribs etc. lock up because I'm trying to stop it from going too fast and my whole body tenses.
Like, at every part it feels like I'm fighting and wrestling with my body against what it wants to do, and it increases more and more because it feels like I'm not even absorbing oxygen from my breath, like my brain has this panicked feeling of "not enough air" and I have this increasing, reflex-like urge to gasp that I also have to fight against.
Jesus Christ, I only did this for like 3 cycles for the purpose of this post and my neck already hurts.
I appreciate you taking the time to duplicate the steps you've been taught, and to describe the effects - please take care of yourself!
You're not required to do a longer exhale, if I'm being really honest - the goal is to extend the length of your inhales (and not even necessarily breathing deeply, just regularly and more smoothly).
Speaking partly from research and partly from personal experience, you can experiment a bit and see what helps you best. Some inhale-hold-exhale patterns that I've seen helping people are 7-5-4 (i.e. seven seconds inhale, five seconds hold, four seconds exhale), or 4-5-4, or similar ratios.
Personally, sometimes doing a long exhale as a start is often more helpful, because it's a good way to trick the brain, but any method works so long as you're slowly increasing how long it takes you to inhale (this is the main part of it). However long that takes you to accomplish, that's how long it takes.
If it hurts to immediately do a large inhale, then uh. Don't do that? You don't have to? If someone's telling you to, they might be more concerned with following their education than looking at the person in front of them.
One thing I would say is that you don't have to correspondingly increase how long you hold your breath with how long it takes you to inhale. A rhythm of, for example, 2-1-3 can be good to start off with, but only if you find it helpful.
Additionally, sometimes squeezing something in time with your breathing will be a better assist than counting - can be your own shirt, or pants, or someone's hand, anything at all that encourages your brain to focus on something other than your breathing (this is one of the reasons why yoga is so popular). Stress balls, fidgeting toys, necklaces, etc, are also helpful but sometimes completely overlooked by people like therapists.
Huh. I thought the exhale being the longest part was supposed to be what was important.
It doesn't hurt to do a large inhale, it just feels weird and wrong. The hurting comes in as I struggle more and more to breathe slowly enough and my body tenses up.
The pattern I learned was 6 seconds inhale, 7 seconds hold, 8 seconds exhale. When I learned about "box breathing" it was 4-4-4. There isn't much consistently. Box breathing feels really bad to me too though.
So, I'm hearing that people count out seconds in a certain pattern. I'm also hearing that you're supposed to slowly lengthen your breaths more and more. If that were the case, the cycles would get longer, right? So counting would only make it confusing? It seems really hard to mentally keep track of 3 different counters as they increment upwards.
I guess I'm overthinking this. But like, how do I know if I'm doing it "correctly" would be my question.
I'm gonna be 100% real with you, breathing exercises straight up do not work for everyone, and with the descriptions you've given about how your body reacts, I doubt that they'll be helpful for you in general.
For context, hi, we're actively studying psychology, specifically because we intend to go into psychiatry. This is very much within our area of expertise.
Breathing exercises are something of an exploit in your autonomic nervous system. You're effectively attempting to forcibly tell your body that things are okay by forcing your breathing to mimic how it would be if things were okay. For a large chunk of people, doing that works just fine, because their autonomic nervous system doesn't FIGHT THEM at every step of the process.
From the descriptions you've given, I would take a guess in saying that your autonomic nervous system is more active/resistant to conscious influence than most people, which means that techniques based on effectively Forging Signals like this just. Will not work for you.
...hmmm
I mean yeah it does feel like my body is struggling against me the entire time...
This might not help you but in case it does, what works for me is not counting seconds but just focusing on making sure I’m not doing shallow breathing and hyperventilating. Counting stresses me out about doing it right so just slowing down for a second and making sure I’m getting proper lungfuls of air and not starving myself of oxygen is a lot more helpful for me.
When my anxiety disorders were less controlled than they are now I used to hyperventilate so much that when I took a moment to breathe properly I got dizzy from actually getting a proper amount of oxygen because my body had adapted to running on low oxygen and that also freaked me out at first.
this is helpful to getting started on anything regardless of what you call it (from this post)
problem solving steps
IMPROVE distress tolerance skill
Since there is a wave of anti-birth control propaganda, this is your reminder that the birth coontrol pill was responsible for 30% more women graduating with college degrees between 1970-1990
Also a whole lot of people need it to hold down a job or stay in school regardless of reproductive risk: it offers menstrual control. It can be the difference between debilitating, bedbound periods and normal function. It’s medicine. It’s also very cheap to produce and returns soooo many thousands of dollars to the economy for every dollar it costs, so don’t let anyone make a false financial argument about it.
Ninth picture for @creatingblackcharacters Melanin Beam Challenge; Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind! She's a protagonist who doesn't have a lot of "bells and whistles", she almost "majestic" in a natural and effortless way, while being a very determined leader with a true goal of peace. I tried really REALLY hard to-
1- not let this redesign be "ambiguous", clearly depicting her as Black (with a very dark skin-tone, her hair done in thick cornrows that are pulled back into a ponytail puff, golden brown eyes, visible upper and lower lip, and a broad nose that has a defined angle)
2- vaguely mimic that watercolor style (I'm doing ALL of these edits in MS Paint with a mouse. there are layers now, which is wonderful, and 3D Paint has more resolution and brushes for details, but it is still tedious to work slowly for the end result I want. I finally copy-paste several times into Microsoft Word to use the few art edits available, including certain blurring/grainy filters. that's it. I made those fake "water drip" spots individually until they looked halfway decent)
Due to my weird childhood and my weird brain, I have this very unhelpful compulsion to conceal Everything I do from Everyone. I Cannot be observed performing any action, no matter how mundane. My nervous system is convinced I'm gonna, like, Get In Trouble for eating food at dinnertime or sleeping in my bed at bedtime.
I've taken to asking myself, "Okay does this task actually require subterfuge or am I stealing a balloon on Free Balloon Day"
how it feels to read 85 pages of a book in one sitting
(ID in ALT text) its been a while since i posted some outfit doodles. not like these are new. they are from last year. but i never know where and how to upload these so here we go. at least the third ones pose is a bit funny hahah.
side note sokkas outfit in the third image is inspired by Victoria Kakuktinniq 2020 New York Fashion Week Ukiaksaq collection
Maaj and her adopted alien baby
Something small just to let out some feelings. I wouldn't take the appearance of baby Neal here as fully canon because I did not spend time actually designing him.
new top contender
Replacing physical buttons and controls with touchscreens also means removing accessibility features. Physical buttons can be textured or have Braille and can be located by touch and don't need to be pressed with a bare finger. Touchscreens usually require precise taps and hand-eye coordination for the same task.
Many point-of-sale machines now are essentially just a smartphone with a card reader attached and the interface. The control layout can change at a moment's notice and there are no physical boundaries between buttons. With a keypad-style machine, the buttons are always in the same place and can be located by touch, especially since the middle button has a raised ridge on it.
Buttons can also be located by touch without activating them, which enables a "locate then press" style of interaction which is not possible on touchscreens, where even light touches will register as presses and the buttons must be located visually rather than by touch.
When elevator or door controls are replaced by touch screens, will existing accessibility features be preserved, or will some people no longer be able to use those controls?
Who is allowed to control the physical world, and who is making that decision?
It's the way it was a simple, objective statement. White allyship 101. "White trans ppl can be oppressors too." Yes. Because Whiteness brings systemic power over their peers of color, even if you are in some way marginalized yourself. Queerness does not cancel out racism. We've talked about this. We've talked about white privilege and what it does and doesn't mean. These were conversations everyone swore they were having in 2016. 😐 And now a blow up of fragility on par with the conservatives we're supposedly up against together. What even.
And I'm not trans so it's not like it's my right to stand here and speak for anybody who is. But from the perspective of Blackness and Bisexuality, of KNOWING that no amount of being queer has ever prevented white queer folks from being racist to me, despite the shared reality that is so long as you buy into white supremacy for your own benefit you will never break your own chains of homophobia and enforcement of gender....
A small compilation of posts from the latest trans twitter discourse. I haven't bothered to screenshot all of the most viral tweets, but also I think it's important to include a lot of the smart ass replies to really help you simulate just how many people are going under black posts and asking "well, what even is racism really?" And if you'd like to know, one of the largest black trans women on twitter was harassed off of the site. No she did not do anything in particular, just posted an image of a sign she didn't make herself that claimed white trans people oppress black trans people (referring to I believe the silencing of a black trans woman who was slated to speak at the protest but was kicked off last minute. @/septembersister, If that's accurate.)
More in the next reblog.
I don't think it ended up in the screenshot but the scenario of the trans bipoc sex worker they were called sex pests in a reply. Victryena was harassed into deactivating.
This is why white feminism is so dangerous. You have to understand intersectionality, you have to listen to the black and brown trans people in your communities, you have to give them space to speak or you create places where it is less socially risky to have profited off of racism than it is to be black.
I wonder how many times I can reblog this to add more posts? Until we have an anti racist trans community, we do not have a trans community.
I keep forgetting I can only add 10 screenshots at a time. There's so many of these posts. Seeing more and more people claiming this isn't happening as well. It is violent to call someone a racist, it is not violent to be racist. TWOC exist to be used as tokens for discourse, but I would never ever center their issues. The TWOC who are being actively silenced in real life and online don't matter, MY feelings were hurt! I have struggles!
Sorry if there are any duplicates, its getting hard to keep track.
I think posters who are attempting to swing back on this conversation claiming this is an organized attack against trans women and fems are willfully ignorant. The sign does not name transfems. The sign is in defense of a trans woman. The vast majority of people making this about trans women are trans women posting racist bullshit. It's not my fault they are trans women. My go to search has been 'white trans' as well as off of my feed. Klansmascs and klansgender nonbinaries are also a plague on our spaces that keep us from community or action, but to dismiss this behavior as a psyop is to engage in apologia for racist communities and erasure of transmisogynoir.
A black trans women and a asian trans women have been harassed and silenced by white transgender "allies".
Racism is a "personal grievance". Racism is a "niche cultural issue." Racism takes up all the air in the room and addressing it is hampering REAL action. Antiracism is "liberalism".
The most disgusting idea I have seen thrown at Vic, who is an asian trans woman, is that she is weaponizing racism or the struggles of TWOC/TPOC. Absurd as an idea of that is it makes me furious that we as a community continue to use the statistics of violence, sexual assault, and murders of black trans women to push for trans rights but when black trans women attempt to discuss racism they face backlash like this. We have tokenized the idea of the black trans woman as a silent victim, the emblem of transmisogynistic abuse, and continue to deny her her struggles lest she be masculinized and deemed an oppressive force herself.
Victry's racial identity is also important. As an asian woman and due to the racist misogynistic associations we, largely as American and Europeans, fetishize the 'natural femininity' of Asians. Her dysphoria is invalidated, she has had an 'easy transition', her sex work is weaponized as equivalent to racial violence. For those who haven't followed along, she returned to twitter with an eloquent statement I will add here.
I think its also important to notice how many of these creeds attempt to call on ones marxist values and position TPOC and POC as welding imaginary economic power over white victims. Sex work is continually used as a bludgeon (perverted sexually deviant TWOC are whining when they reap monetary gain vs white trans women as the victims of sexual violence forced to participate in survival sex work are being looked down upon by rich TWOC who never have to experience sexual violence to benefit)
For every singular person rolling their eyes and proclaiming their oppression has tuned them into the concept of suffering, that their experiences make them the true savior of the oppressed masses who doesn't NEED to ever listen to another group, theres 10 more replies 'just wondering' why we 'even bother to see color', or if antiracist action was CIA funded to erode leftist unity, and all of them are trying to make this exclusively about trans women. It's insane.
It genuinely does NOT matter that your post discussing this is addressing racism among the entire community, I only had room to include one of these independent replies/quotes, but there is not that much of an independent push to attack white trans women it's all shadowboxing or virulent racism. We need to purge 4chan from our community
A couple more to close this out.
Racism is trivial. What even IS race? These rich blacks are speaking over fragile abused white trannies. Racism is a niche issue, you're distracting from actual problems. Calling organizations racist is too aggressive, you can't speak here. You're being inflammatory. You're not showing enough nuance. How was I supposed to know theres a victim when all your political slogans are so mean and violent? Discussions of race is a CIA psyop meant to dissolve the left. I'm angry you called me white and this is YOUR fault. Calling me racist is the justifying transphobic violence. You're equating me to a police officer murdering black people right now! YOU support trans peoples deaths because of the color of their skin! I'm not racist! YOU'RE racist for noticing race!
All of these arguments are deflections and self victimization to avoid actually understanding your place in society. If you so uncomfortable with acknowledging race that you lash out violently against TWOC when they attempt to discuss it, you are a racist. I resent any attempts to take this discussion of racism within trans and queer spaces as a smear campaign.
The way every single one of these tweets is proving the sign correct...
These were horrifying to read. I have a lot of thoughts swirling around my head right now but the fact that such a simple, easy-to-understand sign is being dismissed and mocked this way is embarrassing behavior on their part. This level of vitriol for someone pointing out the truth... They walk through daily life thinking they are immune to being racist simply because they are marginalized in other ways and it's not always obvious you're around unsafe people.
WNBA star Gabby Williams supports trans women playing in the league: “I would welcome a trans athlete on my team or against my team.”
I think a lot people don't realise that microaggressions are still racist. Just cause you're not saying a slur or wishing death on black people doesn't mean you're not being racist. ALL racism counts.
