Lover of the Bizarre

Artist, costume maker, Halloween and cartoon fanatic.

[cute-catts]

this is amazing 🐈 ♥️♥️

[legally-a-bastard]

im blowing up this is adorable

[should-be-sleeping]

I had a cat we rescued from an abuse case where she had to have minor reconstructive surgery to regain jaw function, and she went straight from that into a foster scenario where all of the other cats bullied her relentlessly and she could not leave this person's bathtub without being attacked by 3-5 other animals. She spent a month under my bed.

I did not bother her. I felt so bad for her, I just gave her all the space and time she needed to feel safe. I had a litter box at the foot of the bed, I never saw her use it, but it needed cleaning each morning. I put her food and water on a tray and quietly slid them under the bed to her. After quite some time, I would feel her get up into the bed with me as I slept and curl up gingerly by my feet. I just pretended to remain asleep.

One afternoon as I sat on my couch watching TV she quietly emerged from under my bed. She looked around and then slowly made her way to the opposite side of the couch, climbed up, and laid down there. After a few commercial break she got up and laid beside me. By the end of the show, she was jn my lap. I offered her a gentle head touch and she started purring so hard and so fast I could hear her inhaling between purrs.

[red-pencil]

Backwoods boys

[kaity--did]

Absolutely love how emotionally aware my child is for a 4 and a half year old do not however love stubbing my toe on the island for the 100th time today and hearing "hey mama it's okay to cry! It's not okay to throw a fit though, and we hafta re-...we have to reconitize the difference"

[kaity--did]

When I immediately say "oh no thanks" to a food she offers me she says "oh mommy, chefs try new foods. Can you take one , two, bites for me and if you really don't like it then I won't ask forever again deal?"

like you know what fine sure I'll try your truly heinous concoction because I do in fact hafta respect the deals

[cheese24k]

[clambistro-deactivated20161211]

Ahh, it’s back

[julierthanyou]

i have disproportionately strong feelings about this.

[animentality]

[babushkaat]

[red-pencil]

Inspector, on the trail...

[catcrumb]

[red-pencil]

"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

[armengoldira]

[archduck-waddles]

Fuck it

*un-sesame's your bun*

[girls4losers]

i gotta remember this

[cassolotl]

mine is: be more curious than you are scared

[animentality]

[peterokii]

ok i think this represents it better

[frawgs]

life actually gets better when you leave the house consistently btw like im serious

[dykecosette]

if you don't know where to go, just wander! go to the store and don't buy anything, go to the library just to sit and do whatever you were going to do at home, go to a park and just walk around/sit outside for a bit (weather permitting, of course)

just put some headphones in and walk around the block a couple times if you really have nothing else to do, just getting a bit of air and change of scenery is so good for you

[anderswasrightt]

me the first few weeks of forcing myself to go on daily walks (it gets better tho)

[spacelazarwolf]

i really need tumblr to learn the concept of “if you physically cannot do this then this post is not talking about you” because jesus christ.

[spacelazarwolf]

@a-spectacular-pigeon you get it.

[phosphorusmoon]

I can 100% vouch for leaving the house!

I would force myself to go on a like 5min walk around my neighborhood everyday and holy shit did it help!

I has so much anxiety doing it the first week and it sucked but I'm so glad I powered through! Because it has been ultimately super helpful!

Even if you just sit on your porch or in your backyard, it's so much better that staying inside, because that self isolation is what ultimately drove most of my anxiety and mentalillness.

[girls4losers]

i gotta remember this

[cassolotl]

mine is: be more curious than you are scared

[thedoubteriswise]

so much of being an ok person is just 1) not panicking, 2) not taking things personally, and 3) not letting the vindictive gargoyle that lives in your head tell you what to do. this sucks because brains love doing those things

[nightmare-from-heaven]

Sometimes we can choose this with our on purpose brains, and that is great and is a super important skill. Also though the heart and nervous system kindof tell the brain what to do? So. It's not always accessible.

~●~●~● BUT TRY THIS ONE STRANGE TRICK TO MAKE YOUR BODYBRAIN CALM TF DOWN ●~●~●~

Your nervous system needs the experience of running away when things are scary or not good. What tells your body this is happening is for the psoas muscles to engage while noticing the not good feeling/thing. So. Think/feel about the not good thing, tighten the low belly, and pretend like you're jogging away.

You can try it right now. It can be done seated, with just a slight torso twist with the arms moving how they do when you're running, or can be done standing up with lifting alternating heels and moving the whole body in a running type movement while the toes stay on the ground.

Slow it waaay down, keep bringing your attention back to the not good feeling, and the physical experience of running, with that low belly engaged. (This tells the critter nervous system that saftey can be had and that it's possible to leave things that suck). I like to breathe with my running breath pattern which is a triple inhale (nose), 3 count hold, triple exhale (mouth), 3 count hold. One count = one "step".

Bringing attention and slowness really brings it home (actual running doesn't seem to do quite the same thing for whatever reason). Vary the speeds and movements around and see if anything feels better than something else. Do this until you yawn, or have a deep sigh, (parasympathetic nervous system reset) or until you feel a bit better.

If you can't physically move in these ways at all, close your eyes and imagine it as intensely as you can - its amazing how well that works!

[headspace-hotel]

Update on coping with fear:

have realized that "calming down" coping skills seem to make things worse for me, and that the few things that have helped have been more like the "turn slow tigers into fast tigers" trick

with this in mind, when I was having a spike in anxiety before class, I tried something new: I gripped onto my bed post with both hands and clenched my hands around it as hard as I could, for as long as I could, until my muscles were tired

It did not immediately seem to work, but as I walked to class and in class, I noticed that I felt significantly calmer than usual, and I wasn't having the nausea and feeling of tension that I usually did

This is one of the few times I've used an "anxiety coping skill" and had positive effects continue after I was actively doing it.

I think it will be worthwhile to explore more coping skills that try to "flow with" the fight or flight response rather than "flow against?" Trying to calm down is fighting against my body, but simulating 1-5 minutes of intense struggle that I can pour all my focus into (like squeezing a bedpost really hard until I get tired) lets my body actually indulge that instinct and fight it out, which activates the "calm down" switch naturally afterward, as though I fought and won.

I think the reason the original "clench all your muscles and then release" trick didn't work is because it was focused internally on my body, whereas clenching my fists around an object in my environment is focused outwardly, engaging with my environment as if I'm actually engaging with a threat.

The only threat response that doesn't engage non-self is the "freeze" response. "Freeze" is the one I want to avoid, since it doesn't have a clear exit condition.

I feel that a lot of so-called "coping skills" for anxiety can actually activate the freeze response instead of deactivating the threat response entirely. Because "freeze" is the threat response without a clear exit condition, this could possibly lead to chronic low-level activation of the threat response.

Therefore, anxiety coping skill has to center on non-self objects, instead of centering on the body.