the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything

Abby. 25. "Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest-- thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated." var sc_project=11175610; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_security="1b8396aa"; var scJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://secure." : "http://www."); document.write("");

[preta-dreaming-deactivated20180]

it’s so weird that i never heard anybody talk about this, but… one of the things you will notice when you start recovering is that your old coping mechanisms will stop working. they might even start hurting. which is absolutely scary, and you might even find yourself being nostalgic for worse times when you could still give into those impulses and feel the pain ease off for a while. but they stop working because you are healing. take a deep breath. see how far you’ve come. you’ll go much further yet. be proud of yourself.

[blairwaldorfings]

[the-owl-faced-girl]

I just want to yell so many good things about Britney Spears. Look at this parenting right here; rather than just twist their arms and tell the ‘smile or no McFlurry on the drive home’ she’s checking if her little boys are comfortable with the cameras and attention and if not, no problem baby boy, you go chill. And I have no problem with her staying to get more pictures, especially not when her other adorable kid wants to.  I mean, it’s her job up to a point. And we all know for a fact she probably watched the film with both the little bugs in her lap anyway. 

Considering what she dealt with and went through in front of paps….god, I love her. 

[plotwitch]

people can say what they want about her supposed meltdown, but frankly, that entire ‘episode’ always made perfect sense to me. she and i are of an age, and no matter how young or old i was, i always understood perfectly why she did it, and thought it was utter bullshit that a court could order what they did, instead of reprimanding the many, many people that felt so entitled to her that they drove her to extremes just to get 5 seconds of peace.

and now seeing this kind of thing? she has just gotten more awesome.

[faedreamer-deactivated20180128]

i remember reading how she got herself a tutor so she could help her kids with their homework. not got THEM a tutor, but she got herself one because she wanted to be the one helping them. that’s a+++ parenting right there ok?

[papi-chulo-bucky]

This makes me so happy :’)

[latining]

She got a court order because she was, by her own admission, raising her kids like her mother raised her. The judge sent her to therapy and parenting classes to work out all of the horrible stage-mother bullshit she had to live through. I mean, she thought it was normal to give her kids cough syrup and whiskey so they’d sleep, because it’s what her mother gave her to knock her out when she got rowdy.

I think Britney is a great role model for adult abused children and is living proof that you are not trapped in the cycle of abuse.

[terror-billie]

The purest 90s kid experience is being so happy for Britney Spears in her new life

[lesbianrey]

heteronormativity is when the parent trap (1998) made halle’s obviously lesbian nanny have a forced romance plot with annie’s obviously gay butler

[earlgreypsychblr-blog]

Dissociation in Traumatized Children and Adolescents: Notes

Dissociation, the absence of awareness, is a very normal process when it occurs from time to time.

          Normal Dissociation

o   Fantasy stories and friends take on a separate reality

o   Imaginary friends may be an enjoyable fantasy, expansion of experience, a way to fill loneliness or boredom. They can also be a process for working out fears and ambivalent feelings.

o   Adults may experience a similar type of dissociation when driving but their minds are preoccupied with other thoughts.

o   Adults and children may experience depersonalization—seeing or experiencing themselves as if from the outside—when they are caught in a frightening situation (i.e. getting bitten by a dog, being in a car accident, etc.) or going through a particularly stressful time.

o   Dissociative experiences that are part of the normal development do not cause a fragmentation of experiences or self.

o   The child can be aware of what happened and can talk to others about what happened.

o   If the child’s experience continues to be frightening or nonsupported (not having an opportunity to process what happened), dissociative experiences are likely to continue.

o   The more dissociation continues, the more it affects the child’s perceptions, feelings, physical sensations, or knowledge of the world that is stored outside of the active awareness.

o   Problematic dissociation rarely occurs alone. It is often present with other things such as posttraumatic stress, childhood depression or severe anxiety.

o   Dissociation can often look like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), a conduct disorder, a reactive attachment disorder, a bipolar disorder, or may be comorbid with one of these disorders.

o   Dissociation in a child may be mild, moderate, or extreme.

          Mild Dissociation

o   Presents as a type of “spacing out” which is different from lethargy from depression or withdrawal from anxiety.

o   Abrupt changes in emotion or behavior may occur with mild dissociation.

o   Most children who become upset experience a building of distress or other negative feelings to the point where the child no longer has complete control over her or his behavior.

o   The child with mild dissociation is more like an infant or toddler who moves directly to extreme states of reacting: the mid-states of moderate emotion are missing or minimal.

          Moderate Dissociation

o   Children with moderate dissociation may experience a numbing of emotions or body sensations.

o   The child can block out frightening experiences, strong emotions, body states, emotional needs, and even severe pain.

o   The child may have the feeling that a situation is not happening, that her or his surroundings or events are not real—this is known as derealization.

o   Depersonalization and/or derealization usually first occurs during a frightening event, and it may reoccur whenever something in a child’s world is similar in some way the frightening event.

o   New frightening experiences that remind children of the original frightening experience trigger a fright response and consequently triggers the protective response of dissociation.

o   Depersonalization and derealization are used to avoid distress.

          Extreme Dissociation

o   This occurs when, in order to feel safe, the child needs to separate the emotions, physical sensation, or experiences so completely from her or his awareness that the child, outside of consciousness, “creates” separate parts of herself or himself to hold these emotions, sensations, or experiences.

    §  These are known as dissociative parts or dissociative self-states.

o   Children may experience these parts or self-states as voices telling them what to do or experience a shift insides themselves or such that the children are consumed with the emotion or sensation or reexperiences the age of they experienced the frightening experience(s).

o   The difficulty is that while in a dissociative state the child may be unaware of all the other learning and experiences that the child has had in her or his life.

o   The child may be unaware that years have passed and that she or he is now in a safe place.

o   Fear, anger, and sense of loss all may be experienced without any moderation.

o   What a child does in a dissociative state will not necessarily be remembered when the child is not in that state.

o   Each state (the emotion-state, the younger child state, the “now” state) is likely to have separate memory.

    §  There is, however, an awareness within the child that there are other states or ways of being. The diagnostic term for this level of dissociation is known as Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS) (American Psychological Association, 2009).

o   The angry or deprived-feeling child may steal or break things, but later in another state—perhaps, the part of the child that wants to be close to others—the child may not have access to the memory of lying and acting irrationally, while the child feels misunderstood and mistreated.

    §  This type of interaction together with the intense emotions associated with feelings mistreated will often end of intensifying the use of dissociation.

o   New experiences are not necessarily experienced across all dissociative or self-states. Therefore, infant or toddler parts are not modified by later experiences held in the child or adolescent part.

    §  For some children, there are numerous parts within each age group. One part may be loving while another is fearful.

o   The child’s facial expressions, movements, and general demeanor can vary greatly from state to state. Therefore, the child appears as if she/he are separate people.

o   The child is not capable of recognizing when in one state or that other parts exist.

o   This makes it difficult for the child to control which part is present at any given time.

o   The switches between parts tend to be very sudden and often without the child or the people around the child being able to recognize what triggered the switch. This is referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (American Psychological Association, 2000).

Children may or may not give specific names or other defining attributes (age, gender, feelings) to these parts.

Source:  Wieland, S. (2010). Dissociation in traumatized children and adolescents: Theory and clinical interventions. New York: Routledge.

[earlgreypsychblr-blog]

Dissociative Disorders Reading List

Waters, F. S. (2016). Healing the fractured child: Diagnosis and treatment of youth with dissociation. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company, LLC.

Chu, J. A. (2011). Rebuilding shattered lives: Treating complex PTSD and dissociative disorders (2nd ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

Wieland, S. (2010). Dissociation in traumatized children and adolescents: Theory and clinical interventions. New York: Routledge.

Trudzik, A., & Fogarty, F. (2009). If you tell–: It will kill your mother. Ottawa: Borealis Press.

Brenner, I. (2009). Injured men: Trauma, healing, and the masculine self. Lanham: Jason Aronson.

Dell, P. F., & O'Neil, J. A. (2009). Dissociation and the dissociative disorders: DSM-V and beyond. New York: Routledge.

Moskowitz, A., Schäfer, I., & Dorahy, M. J. (2008). Psychosis, trauma and dissociation: Emerging perspectives on severe psychopathology. Chichester, UK; Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

Despine, C., McKeown, J. M., & Fine, C. G. (2008). Despine and the evolution of psychology: Historical and medical perspectives on dissociative disorders. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Boulanger, G. (2007). Wounded by reality: Understanding and treating adult onset trauma. Mahwah, NJ: Analytic Press.

American Psychiatric Publishing., Vermetten, E., Dorahy, M. J., & Spiegel, D. (2007). Traumatic dissociation: Neurobiology and treatment. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Pub.

Rieber, R. W. (2006). The bifurcation of the self: The history and theory of dissociation and its disorders. New York, NY: Springer.

Howell, E. F. (2005). The dissociative mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.

West, C. (1999). First person plural: My life as a multiple. New York: Hyperion.

Gerity, L. A. (1999). Creativity and the dissociative patient: Puppets, narrative and art in the treatment of survivors of childhood trauma. London; Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley.

Goldberg, A. (1999). Being of two minds: The vertical split in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Hillsdale, NJ; London: Analytic Press.

Bremner, J. D., & Marmar, C. R. (1998). Trauma, memory, and dissociation. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.

Chu, J. A. (1998). Rebuilding shattered lives: The responsible treatment of complex post-traumatic and dissociative disorders. New York: John Wiley.

Vanderlinden, J., & Vandereycken, W. (1997). Trauma, dissociation, and impulse dyscontrol in eating disorders. Bristol, Pa.: Brunner/Mazel.

Watkins, J. G. 1., & Watkins, H. H. (1997). Ego states: Theory and therapy. New York: W.W. Norton.

Carlson, E. B. (1997). Trauma assessments: A clinician’s guide. New York: Guilford Press.

Prozan, C. K. (1997). Construction and reconstruction of memory: Dilemmas of childhood sexual abuse. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson.

Stern, D. B. (1997). Unformulated experience: From dissociation to imagination in psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.

Putnam, F. W. (1997). Dissociation in children and adolescents: A developmental perspective. New York: Guilford Press.

Radden, J. (1996). Divided minds and successive selves: Ethical issues in disorders of identity and personality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Shirar, L. (1996). Dissociative children: Bridging the inner and outer worlds. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Steinberg, M. (1995). Handbook for the assessment of dissociation: A clinical guide. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.

Phillips, M., & Frederick, C. (1995). Healing the divided self: Clinical and Ericksonian hypnotherapy for post-traumatic and dissociative conditions. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Lynn, S. J., & Rhue, J. W. (1994). Dissociation: Clinical and theoretical perspectives. New York: Guilford Press.

Steinberg, M. (1994). Interviewer’s guide to the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV dissociative disorders (SCID-D) (Rev.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.

Spiegel, D. (1994). Dissociation: Culture, mind, and body. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.

Klein, R. M., & Doane, B. K. (1994). Psychological concepts and dissociative disorders. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum.

Bloch, J. P. (1991). Assessment and treatment of multiple personality and dissociative disorders. Sarasota, Fla.: Professional Resource Press.

Singer, J. L. (1990). Repression and dissociation: Implications for personality theory, psychopathology, and health. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Section on the History of Psychiatry., & Quen, J. M. (1986). Split minds/split brains: Historical and current perspectives. New York: New York University Press.

Hilgard, E. R. 1. (1986). Divided consciousness: Multiple controls in human thought and action (Expanded ed.). New York: Wiley.

[urbanthropologie]

ways to start feeling again

sit in the sun without anything to do, feel the heat of the rays hit your skin, realize that this sunlight has travelled a very long way to reach you

walk around barefoot and try to feel as much of the ground under your feet as you can, notice every rock and blade of grass

sit quietly for a while and notice the touch of breath in your nostrils, feel how the air gets cooler as you inhale and warmer as you exhale

drive around aimlessly and blast some of your favorite songs, scream/sing along to them and feel the vibrations of your favorite lyrics as they change the air in your throat and around you, feel that the music is healing you from the inside out

stay away from alcohol or drugs for a few days, try to be as aware and present as you can in every moment, stop trying to numb or dull your senses

eat a few meals without any distractions, notice every bite and taste every flavor that covers your tongue, be grateful for it all

look up at the stars and the moon, understand how small we all are and how immense the universe is, realize what a miracle everything is, let your heart swell with amazement and admiration for life itself

[cjajcjsmajvjksbs]

how to feel good about yourself when school is kicking your ass.

School’s tough, and when you’re getting hours of study and homework dumped on you every class, it’s easy to feel swamped, and it’s even worse when you feel like you’re not making progress anywhere else either. These things have seriously helped me with my mental and physical well-being, hopefully they can help you too!

1. Get the Forest App.  It’s $3 on the app-store, and trust me its $3 well spent. i use this app pretty much whenever I shouldn’t be using my phone. in class, studying, working out, not only does it make sure i stay off my phone, it feels really good to look back on all the time I’ve spent focused throughout the week. 

2. If you’re gonna waste time, do it properly.  Limit the time you spend scrolling social media to 10 minutes. I can’t count how many times I’ve been on Instagram explore page and suddenly an hour has gone past. This makes you feel crap. If you’re gonna waste time, do it in a way that can be measured. watch a tv show, ted talk, or youtube. make a social media post. It’ll make you feel like you’re spending your time doing something and that’s good in it’s own way.

3. Clean your room.  Feeling ridiculously overwhelmed? Clean your room. I don’t care how much work you need to do, or how soon it’s due. If you’re stressed you wont get anything worthwhile done. So clean your room, make your bed, vacuum the floor. It’ll calm you down and make you feel better about yourself. I promise.

4. Leave the junk food to the weekends. I know, everybody says it. But if you’re eating crap 24/7, it’s going to drag you down. I hate the idea of diets, they’re designed for failure and then you feel even worse, but trying to avoid junk from monday to friday helps a lot with your general perception of yourself. 

5. Work out. Another cliche! But they’re cliche’s because they work. I don’t care how often you work out or how much you do, just make sure you do it regularly and do enough to feel tired but good about yourself after woulds. it makes a difference. trust me.

6. Do a skin care routine & use face masks If you dont have a skin care routine, you need one. Not a fancy one by any means (some of us are uni students, I know) just a cetaphill cleanser and moisturiser day and night (with any creams / other products you may use) does the trick. It helps maintain routine and feel refreshed. Facemasks will help you feel like a self care goddess, even if they’re $2.

7. Burn candles & paint your nails Get a few cheap candels (just make sure they wont give you a headache) and burn them whilst you listen to music and paint your nails, its incredibly relaxing and makes you feel like you’re really taking care of yourself.

8. Have a hobby Last one! Learn something completely outside of school. Cooking, art, writing, photography, even if you suck, find something you enjoy and do it, you need a break from everything around you. 

These things have honestly helped turn my esteem and habits around these past years, it wont happen over night but just remembering to do these things every now and then will help you feel better, I promise. 

[thegaywomenchannel]

[slimmetra-deactivated20250917]

any temperature above 70F is homophobic

[stardustschild]

Me to my anxiety : can u like calm down these people don’t even think about you Depression : ever Me: that’s not what I meant

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

[stonehardbeauty]

I sent an apology email to my ex and it went bad! But that's okay!!

[disappearinvisible]

[party-bees-deactivated20181211]

Reblog if you, too, are not dead- only tired and ugly.

[anasandorpygoscelis-deactivated]

same

[stonehardbeauty]

My Coming Out Story, On My Terms

“What are you?” “When did you realize you were queer?” “When/how did you come out?” “How can you be gay if you dated men?” Straight people often think these questions are all pretty much in the same vein, but the truth is I don’t know a single queer person for whom these aren’t really complicated and nuanced. My story isn’t the same as others; not even other queer people in my family or ones I grew up with. I feel like I’m often answering separate questions as best I can, contradicting myself in some places and not being able to say quite what I mean in others. This is my attempt at telling my own story instead of the pieces other people want to know.

“When did you know?” Is a weird question for me, and it has a lot of different meanings within it. As for my childhood, I don’t think I realized anything in the moment. In retrospect, I remember there being certain girls I was just fascinated with, that I couldn't stop staring at. One named Alyssa I still have dreams about sometimes. I met her in Vacation Bible School at age 8 or 9. I thought she was so funny but she also terrified me. That was pretty much how I viewed most girls - I was fascinated by them, and wanted them to like me, but so scared of them. As a kid I had intense and intimate friendships usually with only one girl at a time. I can’t remember an “oh shit” moment when I realized I liked girls but consciously suppressed it. This quote from one of my favorite books, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, describes it well: “even though no one had ever told me, specifically, not to kiss a girl before, nobody had to. It was guys and girls who kissed - in our grade, on TV, in the movies, in the world; and that’s how it worked: guys and girls. Anything else was something weird.” I had no idea it was an option. So I liked boys. It's not that I had to force it; I just felt like I wanted boys to like me because that’s what made me matter, what made me visible. And I didn’t question that for a long time.

One of the things that bothers me about society’s discourse about queerness is how sexualized it is. Like the whole idea that the only difference between straight and queer is “who you sleep with.” That’s so not true. We have a different world, a different language, a different culture. Simplifying us by saying the only thing that sets us apart is sex is minimizing and gross. It also puts an age requirement on being queer. My eleven-year-old cousin is out as liking girls, and sex is not remotely on her radar. There are queer kids, queer celibate people, queer asexual people. It is not just about sex.

However, for me personally, especially since I came out as an adult, sex is part of it.

See, the other part of “when did I know” was when I realized I was attracted to girls. Senior year of college. I was dating a man pretty seriously, and it was my first healthy committed sexual relationship so I was learning a lot. My college was going through a lot of changes too; it was coming under fire for its “no homosexual behavior” clause in the community covenant all students had to sign, and it started a “Sixth Day Sexuality” lecture series that was mostly a bust. I met one of my best friends senior year, who turns out knew nothing about sex. Like, at all. So I started an anonymous blog called Messiah Sexperts, where I answered questions and posted info about where to access birth control and how to get around Messiah’s firewall to watch porn and access websites on basic sexuality info. I had just come back from Temple where condoms were super cheap, so I would also mail free condoms to students who sent me their mailbox number. Messiah tried to shut it down a few times so I had to change our URL but it was mostly pretty successful. So sexuality education became something I researched and thought about pretty often, and something I realized I was interested in. I have a complicated history/relationship with sex, as I feel most people do, and figuring out what healthy sexuality looked like to me was new. Before now, sex was unhealthy for me. I would dissociate and use it to hurt myself, for trauma reasons and Christian guilt reasons, and senior year of college was when I started to work through a lot of that. So during this process of being more open and comfortable with my own sexuality, I had a dream about my roommate. After that, I finally started thinking, okay, this might be something.

I was still with my boyfriend, whom I loved and was attracted to very much, but was out as bi to a few close people. After graduation I moved to Philly for a while to be closer to him. We broke up in December 2013, and in January 2014 I moved back in with my parents and started grad school. During this time, I knew I was queer but had never dated anyone except men, and I definitely felt pressure to “prove” my queerness, which I have since learned is a pretty common sensation. So I watched the entire L Word series, started online dating in earnest, and in February 2014, I went on my first date with a queer person. My parents have poor boundaries, so they asked me a bunch of questions about where I was going and with whom and eventually they guessed it was a date. Then they basically forced me to come out to them, which was wrong! I wasn’t ready and they put me on the spot in a way they really shouldn't have. They know that now.

I dated this person for a while, but they wanted to be casual. I was head over heels for them and trying to play it cool. They are awesome and we’re still friends, but a big part of my feelings for them were because they were my first. Coming out is a second adolescence. Everything feels so much more powerful and consuming. I must've written a thousand poems. You are a new person in a lot of ways, and that can be overwhelming. Throughout that whole year, I didn’t consciously decide not to date men. I was - and still am - bisexual in a lot of ways. But after a year or two of being out, I realized dating men doesn’t feel completely right to me. I feel most at home in myself mentally, emotionally, morally, sexually, and politically when I am dating other queer people. I’m not saying my sexuality is perfect and healthy now, but I don’t dissociate; I don’t feel the need to leave my body anymore. I’m not entirely sure if this is a product of my growth or my orientation or both, but either way it’s better.

As for when did I come out, my parents basically outed me in February 2014, and on Christmas Day in 2014 I told my mom’s family. They’re all Republican, very Christian (uncle’s a pastor), and my parents tried to police how I would come out to them because they saw it as something that would irrevocably rock our family. This was so hurtful. My mom wanted me to tell everybody separately, because she was thinking about her family’s reaction and wanted to protect me, even though she didn’t realize how hard a conversation it would be for me to have once, never mind three or four times. She also wanted me to tell my aunt and uncle separately so they could decide how and when to tell their fourteen-year-old twins, which I flat out disagreed with. Being queer isn’t something that needs to be shielded from kids, and my cousin was one of the reasons I wanted to come out at all. I suspected, and still suspect, she’s queer, and I needed her to hear me say it and I needed her to know I would be here if and when she's ready. I did it, I told them, and things are better but not normal and they probably never will be.

The more I learn about myself the more being queer is an integral part of my identity. I love women, not just romantically and sexually but individually and collectively. Being a woman who loves women informs how I speak and live and breathe in the world, and something I would never, ever change. Loving this part of myself was an important step in loving myself as a whole.

[stonehardbeauty]

A Breakup Letter to Providence from a Weary Heart: What a year it’s been. Providence, you hold a piece of me that has experienced both great pain and great joy. You saw me get my heart broken, total my car, make countless exhausted trips back and forth to Connecticut, graduate with a masters degree, meet new people, and meet different versions of myself. We had some great days and some weeks of just barely scraping by. If I’m honest, there is a hell of a lot I am eager to leave with you. We may have been drawn together for the right reasons but our time is done. Despite all we went through, with you I was at my most vulnerable, and thus, I was at my most powerful. Goodbye Providence, and - I say this with the utmost respect and fondness - good riddance. (at Milford, Massachusetts)

[nothereforthebooty]

I just want to say to all my aros and aces:

-I aggressively care about you

-I’m here to talk always

-you are real and valid humans

-celebrate who you are

-do not EVER let anybody degrade or hurt you for who you are

-you deserve love, acceptance, and respect

-everyone who tells you otherwise can come talk to me

-hold my flower I’ll kick their a**

reblog if you agree

[thebestoftumbling]