#nightgnome

[neechees]

hello! i love your art!! do you sell art prints or stickers by any chance

Hi!! Thank you!! Actually I'm trying to set up my redbubble & imprnt shop atm so I'll have stuff up soon, but I need help from my sister bc I find it confusing lol!

[thebibliosphere]

(If you’re in a difficult place right now or don’t have the energy, please ignore this ask. I won’t be offended.) When I have a bad health day, irrational fears start to take over. I’m a single mom to two young kids. How do you keep your head positive when your body feels like shit or if you’re having an episode or feel so weak you’re gonna pass out? It’s counter intuitive. A positive mind feels so fake when I’m in pain. And physical stuff is bad enough without the anxiety of failing my kids.

Heh, you caught me just as I was about to fill out my therapy work sheets so… yeah, here’s the thing, there’s no one size fits all  for this type of thing, but I’ve found EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to be extremely helpful with helping me deal with my chronic pain and all the other shit in my head I have to contend with on a daily basis.

I’m going to put this under a cut cause it will likely get long, so if you’re on mobile and don’t want to read, you may wish to start scrolling now.

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My therapist specifically went out and got qualified in this type of therapy in order to help me, after she read some studies on how it’s being used to help people with chronic pain to better process their pain. It doesn’t remove the pain, but it can help some people to better manage it, which in turn lowers stress levels, which in turn lowers stress hormones, which in turn directly affects certain types of chronic pain, and can help to manage the stress/pain cycle many people suffer from. And considering my body is so fucked up that stress can tip me over into an anaphylaxis episode, I really cannot stress enough how important and vital EMDR has been to me in helping me manage that stress level.

It’s also been really useful for me in starting to overcome certain traumas and triggers, making my world slightly less traumatizing and anxiety inducing to live in on a daily basis. I really don’t know how to describe it, but it’s like the method gets both parts of my brain talking to each other again in a way no other form of therapy ever has, and suddenly it becomes easier to deal with the thought or memory, which then in turn makes it somewhat easier to deal with any new events normally associated with that trigger. It doesn’t make me feel numb or suppress or remove the memory, it just helps lessen the emotional response and better regulate it.

I’m still very much in the early stages of this type of therapy, but it’s helped me a lot so far in terms of lessening my intrusive thoughts, lowering my stress and anxiety, and also helping the “positivity” to feel less “fake”.

If anything it lets me acknowledge my feelings from a safe emotional space, so instead of “fake it till you make it” I have come to terms with the fact that I will sometimes have moments of absolute soul obliterating rage and grief, and rather than try to bury them or push past them, I will instead take the time to sit down cry my eyes out. Crying, as it turns out, can be quite good for you, it helps the brain balance out certain chemicals and is a bit like trying to hit the reset button on the brain.

So rather than put a brave face on it, I’ll lock myself in the bathroom if I don’t want anyone else to know and I will sob it out, and rather than feeling like a failure for those moments like I used to, I now know that’s normal. That’s part of the grieving process, which is something I will likely always be going through because of how my life is. I have no constants, only variables (far more so than other people), so coming to terms with that and allowing myself to experience it rather than constantly fighting it has been beneficial. Hugely overwhelming and majorly exhausting, but helpful.

Cause being positive doesn’t mean feeling no negative emotions ever, it means dealing with the emotions, all the rage, the anxiety, the pain, the loneliness and everything else in between, and letting yourself experience them without falling into a spiral because that’s all part of the human experience. Nothing is constant, everything is variable and as terrifying as some people may find that, for me it’s a great source of comfort. It means one day, with the right medical advancements, I might get better. It could mean the opposite too of course, but I’m not going to dwell on that. There’s no point, it’s all, to quote my favorite angel, quite ineffable.

And again, this is not a magic cure and it won’t be a good fit for everyone, it’s just what I’m currently doing to try and unfuck my own head, and it’s been very helpful, especially cause I can’t take any meds and sometimes regular talk therapy would leave me feeling triggered and escalate into an episode all by itself. EMDR has been bloody hard work, but it’s also given me my perspective back in some instances, and helped me move on from some things I thought I’d never come to terms with. So if you’re struggling and you’ve tried other things? Maybe look into giving it a go.

Also reaching out to support groups can be very helpful. I don’t know what your life or social situation is like, but a lot of the time we can feel very isolated and alone with our conditions. That’s precisely why I started blogging about my illnesses the way I did. I never wanted anyone to feel as lonely as I did, even if it meant having only one other person in the world who understood. Online facebook groups can be a good way of finding other people who might understand, and they may be able to point your toward face to face groups if you’d like the real world social interaction. You could also try googling for them.

If you have friends who are willing and able, opening up to them on what you’re going through and talking about your limitations can also be very validating and reassuring. I lost a lot of face to face friends when I got sick, but the ones who understood and stuck around? Who made accommodations to ensure I could be part of the social group? Literal life savers.

And you’re not failing your kids. You’re trying your hardest, all the time, even when it doesn’t feel like it. And that’s all anyone can ever do.

Take care, okay? And I hope things improve for you.

[villainous-queen]

The OA news is devastating.

It is indeed. All the cast, all the crew feel the same way and I can’t help but be sad and angry at the same time.

I hope they’ll change their mind, but I doubt it. I think all us fans feel helpless. No matter how sweet the farewells are, I think a few of us feel like they’ve thrown in the towel? I don’t want the cast/crew to give this up. #savetheoa #renewtheoa

[hellsbellschime]

I love The OA & I’m glad you do too.

Yaaaaaasss OA stans unite! It’s such a unique and bizarre show that makes me feel things on a visceral level, I am so sad that Netflix canceled it.

[poweratsea]

I agree re: Hap not calling her OA. “Prairie” was only ever the concept of a girl who needed to be saved. It irritates me but it also doesn’t surprise me given his bent towards rejecting data that challenges his precarious moral framework. He can’t call her something that holds reverence. He needs her to be the smitten girl in the oyster bar and lacks the faith to see how she’d change his life if he could accept that she was reborn to flourish as the angel she always had the potential to become.

This!!! Hap views her as someone who can "save him" but doesnt allow her to grow as her own person and respect that she's something powerful. The scene in S2 at the pool when he realizes she isnt Nina and OA goes off on him and he goes RUNNING proves it. He fears her power, her strength, her mind. Sure he might find what she can do fascinating and say on the surface he wants to work together, but it all has to fit his idea of her. And the moment he finds a way to hold power over her (taking her to a dimension she doesnt know herself) he does it. It doesnt matter what OA would have to say about it. He just wants Prairie to love him, but love doesnt work that way.

[electric-eclectic-collector]

👻

From this ask game:

👻 Do you believe in ghosts?

An interesting question to ask but the simple answer is yes, but the more complex answer is “sort of”. I believe in spirits and ghosts but they aren’t things we can “hunt” and they aren’t things we can “capture” on film. They are so past the barriers between the worlds that they don’t really interact with us much at all. They aren’t “evil” and they aren’t “good”, they are beyond that but they’re human enough too that they are changeable, mercurial. They have wants, they have needs; they go through moods, they feel. We can only hope to appease them and hope they are happy, and if we’re lucky they’ll guide us to happiness as well.

[allons-ymrholmes]

Do you ship anyone in The OA?

I’m kinda shipping Hap/Prairie. I think it’s a combination of their interesting/intense dynamic, and my personal love for Jason Isaacs.

[bullet-farmer]

I did cancel my Netflix bc of the OA & I told them exactly why.

I’m gonna have a long, hard think about doing this too, tbh. On the one hand, I want to support other shows on the platform. On the other, canceling everything after two seasons is a bad decision and they should feel bad–and shouldn’t be rewarded for it.