readableposts:

bisexualhenrycheng:

like there’s this whole thing in this book about how your brain grows stronger and healthier by practicing responding to stress in healthy ways,

because if a stressor is predictable and you feel a sense of control over it, you habituate and stop reacting to it,

but if it’s random and unpredictable you have the opposite response and become sensitized, so your reaction actually gets more and more extreme.

(if you hear a loud noise at predictable intervals you’ll soon stop noticing or reacting, but if you hear it at random intervals you’ll become sensitive to it and anxious.)

so one way to help people who have adverse reactions to reminders of trauma is to give them control over how they’re reminded of the trauma,

because it helps the brain practice responding to stress in a safe way so you can habituate to the stress response.

which is why if someone tags something for a trigger and you still choose to look,

it’s actually an act of healthy resistance against your reaction to that trigger (because it teaches your brain to habituate),

but encountering something triggering in a random and unpredictable way actually increases your stress response and makes you more sensitive to the trigger.

so people who are against trigger warnings because “you have to learn to cope” are actually taking away your tools for learning to cope,

because encountering stressors in a way that further strips you of control over your trauma is never, ever helpful.

it’s a lot of stuff i kind of knew but integrated and explained with more context and science

[spaces added and brief caps removed for accessibility]

somehowunbroken:

in case you were wondering if anyone will remember your random acts of kindness:

when i was in kindergarten, i met a boy named jordan. i don’t remember meeting him. i remember knowing him when, one day before dismissal, he came up and asked if he could be my friend. i was a painfully shy kid, and he was friendly and fun and talked a lot, so i said yes. we were the kind of friends that kindergarteners are: buddies during snack time, sharing the best crayons when we colored, and never even thinking that it could go outside of the walls of our school. it was fine. it was great. i had a friend. he’s the first friend i ever made on my own. he’s the first person who made me realise that i could.

my next clear memory of jordan comes when i was in fourth grade. in the morning, i was talking to kristen, who was one of my only friends at that point. she was looking forward to gym, because it was dodgeball day. i was not; i was always picked last in gym class, no matter who the team captains were. you don’t pick the slow-moving kid with glasses if you want to win, and grade-schoolers can be cruel. jordan heard, though; i remember that, because i remember him looking at me as i pointed out how much i wasn’t looking forward to gym, and i remember my cheeks burning because this popular kid heard about my problems.

we had lunch, and math, and finally gym to round out the day. gym, and dodgeball, and riley being one captain, and jordan being the other. and jordan, who won the coin toss, who got his pick of any kid in our class, picking me first. he didn’t even hesitate. he called my name, he pointed to me, and he smiled at me when i walked up to stand next to him. when riley laughed and picked derek for his team and taunted jordan about how he was going to lose, jordan laughed right back and told him that with me on his team, he was definitely going to win. (i don’t remember if we won or not. we probably didn’t. all i remember is not hating dodgeball for one day, and that was enough.)

fast-forward another few years, to another gym class in another school. we were doing baseball, which was my own personal hell in seventh grade. my eyesight hadn’t gotten any better, and i was too tall, too skinny, too out of touch with how to move my limbs to possibly make the bat and the ball connect. rules were rules, though, and no matter how far back in the batting line i stood, nobody was allowed to go back in the building until everyone had a chance. i made myself last every chance i could, because by that point anyone who was interested in the sport had gotten their fill and wandered away, and it didn’t matter that i stuck my elbows out and hunched over the plate and swung and swung and swung at balls that kept whizzing by me and smacking into the fence.

this day, though, this day was the worst day, because i had to be in the middle of the lineup. i don’t remember why; i only remember the sick feeling in my stomach, the feeling that the class would laugh at me as i stood there praying i didn’t move the wrong way and get hit with the ball. when i got up to home plate, i grabbed the bat and stood there and stared at the pitching mound, and jordan smiled back at me. i was clearly nervous; it was no secret that i hated gym, wasn’t any good at it. there were two kids on bases in the field, and someone in the back made a comment about striking me out; one of the kids on base groaned about how he was just going to steal home. jordan kept smiling as he walked off the mound, came up next to me, and quietly asked if he could show me how to hold the bat, how to stand. he demonstrated how to swing, and told me to just try to hit it gently. “just like this,” he said, and held the bat out in front of himself. bunting. i knew the name, even if i’d never been able to pull it off before. “hold it there. you’ll hit the ball.”

i nodded. i didn’t care. i wanted it to be over with.

he walked back to the mound, looked back and me, and then took a few steps forward. “just like i said,” he told me, and i nodded again. he tossed the ball very gently, and i held the bat out, and miracle of miracles, i bunted the ball. “run, run,” he yelled, making a ridiculous dive for the ball, kicking it out of the way of any of the outfielders who were catching on and heading for it. “first base!”

i ran. i made it to first base. i laughed, because i had never been able to do that before, and jordan turned and smiled at me before returning to the mound and striking out the next three people at bat, one right after the other.

now consider this: i met jordan almost twenty-five years ago. i remember these things, these small kindnesses, the things he didn’t have to do but did anyway. he probably doesn’t remember doing any of them. he probably doesn’t even remember me, at this point, and that’s fine. i remember his kindness when there wasn’t a ton to be had, and i remember him smiling when everyone else was laughing at me.

kindness matters. thanks for being kind, jordan. and to everyone else who has been kind, to me or to someone else: thank you, too. your kindness is noted, is appreciated, is remembered.

It finally happened! The rite of passage for nerdy parents!

My four year old just looked at me like I was being very, very dense, and explained that the reason that Batman was flying was because he had a cape. Capes make people fly, mama. 

I could almost hear the ‘duh’ after.

princenofthebutts:

Ullaakuut! I am Inuk, and I am here to explain to all you Qallunaat about the very incorrect and downright rude word used to call Northern Indigenous peoples in Canada and Alaska.

Eskimo is a slur. Some of the older generation are fine with being called that, but it’s been only recently that Northern people have been colonized by the Qallunaat. As such, they grew up in a time where their language was taken from them, and they were told that that is what they are called (you’ll also see this with the use of Indian when referring to indigenous people). The younger generations tend not to be as happy with being called Eskimo, and given the role the word has had in the colonization of us, there is good reason for it. We have our own words for us. Mine is Inuk. Plural is Inuit. Inuit means people.

Eskimo is a slur. If you are not a person who would fall under the term, you have no right to say otherwise. Northern indigenous people can choose to reclaim it if we want. Some do. But that is not an excuse for you, as Qallunaat, to use the word. A lot of us see it as a slur. It doesn’t matter where the word comes from. It doesn’t matter what it means. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, we say it is a slur, it is a slur. You can argue until you are blue in the face, but white people, who colonized my people, who threw my grandparents in residential schools, who called us Eskimos and protested seal hunts and our ways of life, do not get a say.

Eskimo is a slur. We can reclaim it, but for many, it is still a dirty word. And no matter how much a word is reclaimed, it will always be a slur. We have names for ourselves. We have our words, our names which we present to you. If you demand I call you Scottish/French/whatever, I can demand you call me Inuk. I am not an Eskimo. That is not my word.

As well, “censoring” the word doesn’t suddenly make it okay. Take it out of your vocabulary.

If you are white, you are not to add on to this. You are not to talk about the origin of the word. You are not to argue that it’s not a slur. I am the person who that word refers too. I am telling you it is a slur. Do not whitesplain on this post. It is a slur. Point blank. If the word is not used on you, is not meant to refer to you, this is not your conversation. Northern people are the authorities on this. No one else. Our word is law on this, and when a sea of voices denounce the use of the word, and a few promote it, you may not use those few to call me a word that is hurtful and carries a painful history of colonization. My people are called it. Not yours.

If you need a word for nose rubbing, bunny kisses is an acceptable (and adorable) alternative that is respectful.

Muslim brothers and sisters

sockknitteranon:

totalsillyfilly:

hisnamewasbeanni:

feelslikeblue:

isfree2fly:

So I found this app called Scan Halal where you scan the bar code of your food and it tells you if its halal or not. It’s a free app too. Pass this on so others can see and worry a little less about their food/snack choices

Yessss, it is very handy especially in non-muslim countries

If you reblog this for no other reason, do it because it’ll piss off Pauline Hanson. And pissing off Pauline Hanson is reason enough to do anything.

Pissing off Pauline Hanson is my favourite pass time

If you reblog this for no other reason, reblog it to make a Muslim feel safer, more accepted, and/or more informed about food.

Other people and their needs are not your game pieces to use to offend others or make yourself feel better.

living-the-aro-ace-life:

Trying to explain to people how I can feel sensual attraction without any romantic or sexual attraction is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. It’s surprising because it really isn’t a foreign concept.

It’s kinda like seeing a really cute, happy, or sleepy animal and getting the urge to pet, cuddle, and hold it. Not because you have romantic or sexual desires for the animal, but because you feel drawn to give it affection, and doing so makes you happy.

It’s also like holding something of great sentimental value. You feel the need to keep it close to you because it’s special and important to you.

For me, there are just some people I get the deepest sensual attraction for. All I want to do is hold them and cuddle them and give them soft little kisses and tell them how wonderful they are and how important they are to me. I don’t have any sexual desire for them. I don’t have any romantic feelings for them. They’re just really special to me and I feel drawn to give them a lot of affection because doing so makes me happy and will hopefully make them happy too.

If you’re close to your family, or have really close friends – it’s kind of similar to that, in my opinion. I feel similarly towards my husband and my little sister. I want to cuddle them, be close to them, hang out, talk, be around them more then anyone else. Looking at their faces makes me feel happy.

Looking at my husband, my heart sometimes feels full to bursting. It’s the same with my kids. I love them so much it’s hard to contain.

The animal comparison seems pretty apt, too. Sometimes, being with a pet can be pure joy. I really like this post.

actuallyblind:

Y’all I just want to say that lately I have been seeing more and more art posts on my dash that have image descriptions and I cannot describe how happy that makes me like I feel like real progress has been happening and I just want to say thank you to every single one of you that put captions on your image post or add captions to other people’s posts. Like it used to be that I would never in a million years see a post of fan art that had a description and like it was just normal and I would automatically scroll past lots of photo posts, but now it’s like I see one with the caption every couple days and like now I actually check for them just in case because more and more people are actually adding them lately??? It’s amazing and I am so here for this new piece of Tumblr culture thank you so much for adding image descriptions to your photo and fan art posts.

ilikemusicalsandtheinternet:

thechekhov:

danscratch:

So I found out that people have strong feelings about sparkling water

I, too, share the sentiment of this post. Sparkling water needs to chill and stop trying to bite the inside of my mouth. It’s rude and unpleasant.

Angry water

[Tweet from @EPASketch saying: Sparkling water is disappointing because you smell it and it’s like mmmmm super fruity and then you taste it and it’s just angry water.

End tweet.]