Maxine

she/her - yt - queer - system - main system members: Lotus / Elizabeth / Scarlett / Rose / Autum / Amy used to be BladesQueer

[lotusofhope]

hey there ! this is the blog of a system named Maxine. my name is lotus! the map above gives our names and pronouns. we don’t really sign our posts or anything (tho we might in the future) but you can probably at least recognize different styles of writing! just to let you know, we are radically inclusive, and that means we protect endogenic  systems along with queer labels and identities that may make others uncomfortable, and are supportive of people with different disorders that may be difficult for others. thanks for checking us out! please enjoy your stay

[unhappytogekiss]

a new reality tv show called So you think you can write Doctor Who

twelve episodes, twelve contestants - a mix of annoying middle aged sci fi authors, fan fic authors and random people off the street

a variety of against the clock writing tasks, big finish scripts, ability to interact with actors without shouting at them and challenges where you have no budget or doctor for an episode

judged by solely by christopher eccleston

this is how you find the new doctor who showrunner

[meadow-dot-7z]

Magical girl transformation where I look exactly the same by the end except my posture and speech are different and I have to be reminded of several details on the conversation we just had

[narcissistcookbook]

fun fact: you don't need to be dead to haunt someone. you can literally go round to their house and do all the stuff a ghost would do right now

[lotusofhope]

If objects were moved around your house and weird sounds happened at unexpected times, would you be more surprised if it was a ghost or a random tumblr user who broke in constantly to mess with you

Ghost

Random tumblr user

Voting ended onDec 30, 2025

[guldaastan]

some americans are so bad at protesting they should be calling themselves american't

[lotusofhope]

my favorite sign ( I did NOT take a picture cuz i didn't want to be that person) was "My dad fought for FREEDOM NOT for separating FAMILIES" i know that's still a voter and all but god damn

[robertreich]

Your regular reminder that trickle-down economics is a cruel joke designed by the wealthy.

[theunicorncomic-blog]

[randomushroom]

HE FOUND TUMBLR??????

[robertreich]

I’ve been here the whole time.

[andthentheywilleatthestars]

The fact that teleporters kill you isn't taken seriously because sci fi fans see themselves not as exploited teleporter-enterers, but as temporarily embarrassed teleporter-leavers

[lotusofhope]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-working-plan-move-1-million-palestinians-libya-rcna207224

You guys are absolute morons.

i wasn't a trump voter or a biden dead ender or a kamala supporter so idk why the fuck you are mad at me

[sprinkledsalt]

Lots of people who totally blew it in November are soooooo mad that liberals were completely correct about the high stakes of the election, which were broadcasted clearly in bright red lights every single day leading up to November 5th. But they could've chosen not to do that.

[sprinkledsalt]

They're not mad that Republicans are doing horrible things; they're mad that everyone knows Democrats warned them this would happen and they can't save face to anyone with a functioning memory

[alan713ch]

"Democrats should be doing something" you took their power away from them Barbara. Like you wanted.

[lotusofhope]

Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy

Deborah Lipstadt said she agrees with some of the Trump administration's moves to deport students and crack down on campus antisemitism.

you guys are absolute morons

[jesusinstilettos]

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)

[lastoneout]

I have been in EMDR therapy recently to help with past trauma and like 90% of the appointments is just this post. Which I thought was silly at first bcs I was like "well I know how I'm feeling, I feel bad" but man you have no idea. Literally JUST talking through whatever stressful thing I have going on at the moment and whenever I feel a Big Emotion stopping and acknowledging, naming, and sitting with it. I've made more progress with my trauma and mental illnesses just doing this in a single year than I have in like 10+ years of therapy.

It might feel silly or pointless at first but stick with it, it really helps.

[lotusofhope]

This is often the critical healing parts of therapy but keep in mind that these are well into the process and ignore the critical first steps.

Largely, bringing a sense of safety to a person, usually done in therapy by making the hour that you are with that therapist be in complete safety.

If you aren't in therapy, it may look completely different. You may not feel safe to feel your body, especially for different kinds of trauma.

EMDR especially doesn't go forward at all until a patient is secure at least in the therapeutic space. The first steps for healing is finding what safety, no matter how little, you can find in your life.

[nyancrimew]

i think me receiving more and more leaks/tips that start with "im about to get fired anyways, so..." is a pretty good recession indicator im ngl

[nyancrimew]

my signal is nyancrimew.01 if you need to securely talk to me for any reason btw

contact maia :3

meow

[maxknightley]

do you ever think about how, like... there's only so many forms the human body can take. if you see enough faces, you will inevitably find at least one set of doppelgangers. if you listen to enough voices, you will inevitably find soundalikes. the larger the human population becomes, the greater the likelihood that someone out there is a dead ringer for you and you'll never even know it

[maxknightley]

this post inspired by me listening to a mutual's podcast and doing a double take because they sound exactly like General Ironicus

[lotusofhope]

as funny as the concept is, i believe this grossly underestimates the variety there is in every aspect of physical feature of humans

[doubleca5t]

What the most famous book about trauma gets wrong

People kept telling me to read "The Body Keeps the Score." I was shocked at what it actually says.

I'm sorry THAT'S what's in this book??

[metamatar-deactivated20250401]

The book opens with the story of Tom, who was an American Marine in the Vietnam War. After his platoon was ambushed, Tom went on a crime rampage, raping a Vietnamese woman, shooting a farmer, and murdering local children. Van der Kolk centers Tom’s torment as what matters. We are invited to step into his conundrum after his honorable discharge: “How can you face your sweetheart and tell her that you brutally raped a woman just like her, or watch your son take his first step when you are reminded of the child you murdered?” van der Kolk writes.

But wait a second, what about that Vietnamese woman or those children? Van der Kolk doesn’t even offer a throwaway condolence for the nonwhite victims or their families, who are treated as mere collateral damage.

[...]

For example, van der Kolk claims “traumatized children have fifty times the rate of asthma as their nontraumatized peers.” He footnotes a paper co-authored by Noll about the long-term impact of incest. That paper doesn’t contain the words “asthma,” “breathing,” or any related terms. Noll confirmed over email: “We’ve never published on asthma.”

Article is too gung ho about the benefits about CBT, but clearly this book is garbage on it own.

[donjuaninhell]

I'VE BEEN RAILING AGAINST THIS BOOK FOR YEARS. Van der Kolk is a quack, he believes in false memory syndrome, multiple personalities, hypnotic regression, all that quack psych shit. The man is just a fucking kook and convinced that you can think yourself into an autoimmune disorder and that it's your fault if you suffer chronic pain because it was your bad thoughts that caused it (helpful hint: it's hard to be upbeat when you're in pain 24/7). It eats at me every day that this pile of shit has so much cache with otherwise rational people because so many of his claims are 100% contrary to all physical evidence, but they "seem" right and offer nice little convenient narratives to people explaining why they're sick.

[lotusofhope]

Is it possible that you are projecting the blame here? I haven't actually read his work, though I am a huge proponent of SE in general and the trauma model of physical health, but in what way is saying "people with chronic pain often have a trauma history and their pain could be a manifestation of their trauma history and the ways they learned to cope with distressing feelings when they were not previously allowed to, or currently not allowed to authentically feel their feelings, and for these patients it is important for intervention to not only be physical intervention but also theraputic" , in what way is a theory like that assigning blame to the individual who is suffering not only becuase of physical pain but also previous trauma?

Additionally, a plural understanding of the human mind is just the most accurate description of how our brains work, not kook shit.

[doubleca5t]

What the most famous book about trauma gets wrong

People kept telling me to read "The Body Keeps the Score." I was shocked at what it actually says.

I'm sorry THAT'S what's in this book??

[metamatar-deactivated20250401]

The book opens with the story of Tom, who was an American Marine in the Vietnam War. After his platoon was ambushed, Tom went on a crime rampage, raping a Vietnamese woman, shooting a farmer, and murdering local children. Van der Kolk centers Tom’s torment as what matters. We are invited to step into his conundrum after his honorable discharge: “How can you face your sweetheart and tell her that you brutally raped a woman just like her, or watch your son take his first step when you are reminded of the child you murdered?” van der Kolk writes.

But wait a second, what about that Vietnamese woman or those children? Van der Kolk doesn’t even offer a throwaway condolence for the nonwhite victims or their families, who are treated as mere collateral damage.

[...]

For example, van der Kolk claims “traumatized children have fifty times the rate of asthma as their nontraumatized peers.” He footnotes a paper co-authored by Noll about the long-term impact of incest. That paper doesn’t contain the words “asthma,” “breathing,” or any related terms. Noll confirmed over email: “We’ve never published on asthma.”

Article is too gung ho about the benefits about CBT, but clearly this book is garbage on its own.

[lotusofhope]

why are you guys carrying water for people mad at doctors trying to contextualize trauma as a full body experience?

Trauma affects the whole body. Asthma is just one well studied example. CBT is not as effective at treating PTSD and especially CPTSD as other fields of therapy. Sometimes case studies are of people with disgusting actions, they are still traumatized - I can guarantee you many rapists are traumatized and we can talk about the mechanics of that without just pretending rapists aren't human.

Being big mad that a foundation shaking book in a field that currently thinks being fat is an individual issue because of small grievances is not the progressive direction you think it is.

[ablednt]

Yeah idk about this one I get what you're saying but I assure you that centering veterans in ptsd research does not help us it's actually quite reductive because their experiences are different from the majority of people suffering from PTSD but research on more common experiences (abuse, cults/religious trauma, systematic oppression etc) are neglected in favor of assisting our poor troops who are killing nonwhite people for oil.

And like cannot emphasize enough this is genocide apologism like in a world full of traumatized people choosing to study and empathize with a rapist terrorizing people to further imperialism is an issue.

Like it's unforgivable to write about a rapists trauma responses and neglect to humanize or mention his victim? What about her trauma? Rape victims in warzones/occupied places are incredibly under-studied and we live in a time where people still regularly debate the existence of comfort women and other victims in the first place.

Trauma affecting the entire body is a concept that's already being researched elsewhere and according to this the asthma link they're making isn't properly cited which is a really big deal when it comes to things like this. They aren't arguing that the concept of trauma affecting the entire body is inaccurate, they're pointing out how inappropriate and unhelpful it is to amplify the voice of an imperialist rapist is in our current political climate.

This book is not helpful and shouldn't be supported in favor of other more credible research on the topic, that's what is being said here, not that research as a whole shouldn't be supported.

[lotusofhope]

I definitely agree with everything you said here, and I wish that was the tone of this article and where the discussion was headed, but I very much believe that the direction the article was headed and where I find umbrage with it is towards a reductive view where trauma can be fully seperated from the body and different ways we interact with the world.

Its kind of like other foundational work in a world where those in power are so far removed from what it is trying to push that it is important to center arguments like yours, which are more progressive and focused on the real issues at hand with a work like this, without letting regressive institutions use those arguments to continue the status quo.

If the article writer truly wanted to advocate for better evidence for the mind body connection and trauma connection that is very evident in modern science results yet very lacking in medical practicioners, then why did they not underscore what the correct studies and connections were? Why did they try to discredit without any connection to other more science based practicioners of this model like Gabor Mate?

Yeah, obviously we should be trying to underscore how trauma affects survivors of imperialism more than those who are enacting it, yet if the only people who are yelling at doctors connecting obesity and autoimmune disorders and ashtma to trauma happen to use US vets to illustrate as such, then if I choose to do a public takedown of their shoddy choices, it must come with ample work to ensure that I still stand behind their conclusions, which the article absolutely does not and it appears the comments do not.

[doubleca5t]

What the most famous book about trauma gets wrong

People kept telling me to read "The Body Keeps the Score." I was shocked at what it actually says.

I'm sorry THAT'S what's in this book??

[metamatar-deactivated20250401]

The book opens with the story of Tom, who was an American Marine in the Vietnam War. After his platoon was ambushed, Tom went on a crime rampage, raping a Vietnamese woman, shooting a farmer, and murdering local children. Van der Kolk centers Tom’s torment as what matters. We are invited to step into his conundrum after his honorable discharge: “How can you face your sweetheart and tell her that you brutally raped a woman just like her, or watch your son take his first step when you are reminded of the child you murdered?” van der Kolk writes.

But wait a second, what about that Vietnamese woman or those children? Van der Kolk doesn’t even offer a throwaway condolence for the nonwhite victims or their families, who are treated as mere collateral damage.

[...]

For example, van der Kolk claims “traumatized children have fifty times the rate of asthma as their nontraumatized peers.” He footnotes a paper co-authored by Noll about the long-term impact of incest. That paper doesn’t contain the words “asthma,” “breathing,” or any related terms. Noll confirmed over email: “We’ve never published on asthma.”

Article is too gung ho about the benefits about CBT, but clearly this book is garbage on its own.

[lotusofhope]

why are you guys carrying water for people mad at doctors trying to contextualize trauma as a full body experience?

Trauma affects the whole body. Asthma is just one well studied example. CBT is not as effective at treating PTSD and especially CPTSD as other fields of therapy. Sometimes case studies are of people with disgusting actions, they are still traumatized - I can guarantee you many rapists are traumatized and we can talk about the mechanics of that without just pretending rapists aren't human.

Being big mad that a foundation shaking book in a field that currently thinks being fat is an individual issue because of small grievances is not the progressive direction you think it is.

[lotusofhope]

So, which one of you idiots thought that Zionists would be likely to collaborate with Nazis?

You know, saying a Rabbi would collaborate with Nazis?

YOU KNOW, THAT A JEWISH RELIGIOUS LEADER WOULD COLLABORATE WITH A GROUP THAT DESPISES AND WANTS TO KILL ALL JEWS?

Which one of your personalities is the idiot who suggested that?

Netanyahu’s Odd Embrace of Elon Musk

The Israeli prime minister is playing a seedily transactional game.

[bacony-cakes]

op turned off reblogs but i wanted this on my blog so i screenshotted it

[lotusofhope]

we lost roe under a democratic president

they are both bad. good cop bad cop, good cop is still a cop. Controlled opposition that doesn't come close to restoring what the "truely bad" party did is not a party you should put any faith or effort into

Kamala winning would have made it project 2029 instead. You need to stop conflating "both parties are evil and voting is not going to solve this issue" with "there is no solution to this issue"