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 :)
Animal of the day: Woolly chafer beetle! (Sparrmannia flava) The African woolly chafer beetles are among the few insects that actually have a fur-like coat! Although not truly fur, it aids in retaining warmth during cold desert nights! They are attracted to lights, much like moths, and are able to fly! The chafer beetle feeds on vegetation found in its arid environment! Image source: https://www.reddit.com/r/awwnverts/comments/q3ot6o/african_woolly_chafers_are_so_cute/
IF ONLYYYYYYYY 😭😭 grieving what could have been :[
glimpse into my beautiful imaginary world where arthropods are really big and we domesticated them
edit: people are starting to say some "my worst nightmare" or "eeeww no that one is yucky and scary" comments on this like they do on any bug post and id like to say. it's fine if you don't like bugs it's fine if you're scared of bugs but don't put that on MY post clearly talking about how much i like them and how cute i think they are. you can make your own damn post about how much you hate wasps or spiders or whatever. i'm blocking people who make these kinds of comments.
I think one of my favourite jumping spiders is Opisthoncus necator just because its common name is just “The Murderer” for some reason, so if I ever go to look at it on iNat, I am greeted with this very accusatory title and what is essentially its mug shot
Reposting all my spn art ive posted before I realized my old account exploded!!
Fun ADHD hack is that you're allowed to just go to the library and reserve a study room for a couple of hours and make all your phone calls or whatever adult shit you need to do but can't because your house is for House Stuff and for some reason your brain has designated "phone calls for doctors and other such things" as School Adjacent and therefore refuses to do it in an insufficently academic environment. Like it's free. You can just do that.
🐛🌻🐜🍄🟫🪲🦋🍃🐞☘️🐝🍄🐌🌿🪷🪱🕷️🌱🌷
request for @pastel-yellow-dreaming ⭐️🌼✨🌻☀️
I hope you like it!! :DDD tysm for sending a request!!
requests are open and very wanted <333