#It's so hard to describe what the two sensory hallucinations really *FEEL* like

[artkaninchenbau]

An AWS comic

[my-brothers-corrupted]

It's okay to talk about how hurting you are, Jackie. You came out of it with scars and trauma too. You're not alone in your pain, and JJ and you have been through the ringer and pulled back again. It's okay to acknowledge that it hurts. Not everything is okay, but that's okay.

Jackie purses his mouth before sticking another handful of nachos in it.

"I'm just taking guesses here," says Bowlan. "But the only reason I'm bringing it all up is because I expect that the pair of you need some medical attention as well."

Blue and Jackie exchange sulking looks. Blue sips at his fizzy drink.

Bowlan sighs.

"Okay. Let's talk Kayden."

"Please," mumbles Blue.

"Schizophrenia is one thing. There are ways we can work on handling it. Sometimes schizophrenia does not respond well to treatment or medication, but based on what you've told me, I think some behavioral therapy and medication, along with social support, could really help Kayden improve."

"That's great. But you said you thought there was more than schizophrenia going on."

"Well, there's the obvious things - vitamin deficiencies and some other things I want to look into. His bones are pretty brittle. I'm not surprised he has old fractures. But psychologically, yes, I'm worried about other things. Your brother's traumatized. I'm concerned about Post-Incarceration Syndrome."

“What... what is that?” asks Jackie. “Like, what does that mean?”

“No matter what happened to you boys, it seems that Kayden has really felt that he has been alone – and possibly stuck in his room – for several months, believing that this Anti is forcing him to stay inside. So, while Post-Incarceration Syndrome is usually applied to someone who has been in prison, I think it might describe some of what your brother is going through. It often includes PTSD – the reliving his terror, the paranoia, the panic attacks and breakdowns – and can even include Stockholm Syndrome, which, in what I have to admit would make a very interesting case study, he seems to have developed through his own hallucination. Most concerningly, I think that Kayden is demonstrating Social Sensory Deprivation from long-term isolation.”

Blue's stomach flips. He stares down at his plate, losing his appetite fast.

“He has some stimming behaviors consistent with intense social deprivation, including, at times, self-harm, slamming his head into things or biting his fingers to blood. He's deeply obsessive. You've probably seen the way he draws for hours and hours at a time, often unable to stop even when someone tries to pull him out of it, and sometimes drawing the same thing again and again and again. He gets overwhelmed if you talk to him for too long, but at the same time, he seems almost alarmingly desperate for social interaction. He needs to be with people right now.”

“We won't leave him on his own again,” whispers Blue, unable to meet his eyes. “We... couldn't do anything about it til now.”

“All we can do is move forward,” agrees the old man kindly, stirring his tea. “I'm just sorry he's been through so much. And I'm glad he has you now.”

“Yes, forever now,” agrees Jackie. “I promise.”

“But there is another reason I'm bringing this up. Post-Incarceration Syndrome can also include personality changes and a shifted view of the world. In Kayden, this is appearing as learned helplessness and submissiveness, generally ingrained in a person as part of their survival mechanism in an oppressive or abusive environment. He has felt that he is completely at the mercy of this monster for a very long time, and that would make it difficult for anyone to get out of the mindset that kept them alive.

"On the other hand, in some prisoners, it manifests as aggression towards others and more angry, defensive personality traits and outbursts, trying to protect one's self from the abusive environment by lashing out. But Kayden has been mild – and in fact quite kind – so long as he isn't hallucinating a threat. There can also be a need for control and a preference for the set-up of the abusive system even if it was problematic. They're called Institutionalized Personality Traits – or just Antisocial Personality Traits. And I bring this up, boys, just because I wonder if maybe Kayden isn't the only one displaying some of these behaviors.”

Blue and Jackie look up together, and then at each other, sharing the same expression of alarm. Just as quickly, they turn back to their plates, Jackie scraping up his chips while Blue takes a hasty sip of his drink.

Bowlan laughs and then clears his throat apologetically. “Sorry, it's just that you two are certainly twins. I think you must be using telepathy.”

Blue sighs, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “We just... we're here for Dap – for Kayden.”

“If Kayden is the only one who's been through hell in the last few months, then sure, let's focus on Kayden,” Bowlan agrees, picking at his salad.

“I do have some control issues and a bad temper sometimes,” says Jackie. “Hard to keep my emotions in check. That's probably all you're seeing.”

“Ah,” says Bowlan, visibly unconvinced. “And yourself, Matti?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” answers Blue blankly.

“You're also quite thin, the pair of you. A little more active, I would guess, but quite thin. A little scarred up. A little panicky at times, if you don't mind me saying. Look, we don't have to get into it, I'm not a shrink, just... think about it. About getting some help for yourself.”

Blue turns away darkly, but Jackie's wheels are already spinning, absent-mindedly sifting his chips through cheese. He does have angry outbursts. He does cling to the brother system and relive bad shit that's happened to him, and sometimes he feels so angry at everyone else around him that he just wants to slink home to his brothers and spend the rest of his life hating the world until it stops scaring him. Post-Incarceration Syndrome. It repeats in his head.

Maybe it's a name for the enemy he's facing.

And if he can admit that there is an enemy to face, if he can admit that there is something that's hurting him - well, maybe then he can fight it too.

“What do we do to help Kayden with all that, though?” asks Blue. “Social isolation and learned helplessness and Stockholm Syndrome. Like a therapist, okay, sure. But what do we do? As his family?”

“I think it will be really good for him to be living with someone again,” Bowlan encourages. “Keeping him company, providing him with the social stimulation he's been missing. Just helping him live again, you know? He needs hobbies other than drawing for fourteen hours a day. Needs to get out of the house, to meet people, to remember who he was before all this. Help him make his own decisions and give him power in his life again so he doesn't think he just has to lie down and let this all happen to him. Respecting his choices is going to be key here. I've been watching you two – I know you want to take care of him. But you will need to be able to let him decide how to take care of himself too once he's feeling a little more stable. Otherwise you'll just become the new boss to him.”

Blue nods. He supposes that's what the cameras said too. Tearing down the big brother system. Treating Dapper like an equal. In the abstract, it all makes sense. He just needs to start applying it. Harder than it sounds, but... necessary. Vital, even. Shit, this is going to be difficult.

"Do you have any questions for me?" asks the doctor.

[realityshiftingandblogging]

Dreaming, An Explanation

Okay before I start, I had this posted on Amino a while back so if you go "hey I've seen this on Amino-" that's because it's my post. If you need further proof I'll log in and screenshot XD

I wanted to make this to show others valuable information and maybe clear up how the dream process works! Before anyone asks - yes I did write this. These are my NOTES from the book I was reading. You can find it here: https://books.google.com/books/about/500_Dreams_Interpreted.html?id=g-TqtgAACAAJ

Obviously I do not claim to have a scientific discovery on any bit of this information (lol), it's public information.

I've collected, gathered, and put into my own words. If I had to copy it word for word I have "quotations" and things like "(from the book.)" Also, you'll see me say "quote on unquote." If anything wasn't quoted, I sincerely apologize in advance. I hope you get any answers you have needed, and that this isn't too boring! The whole point of this was to give information on dreams and how make the most of them. I never really understood (until a few years back) why we lucid dream and how it works. Why does it do this and is there anything that triggers it? So here is what I learned and what I also got from the book! (I really hope you find answers because this took....8 hours? To write?) So in other words, I hope this clears things up for you!

Side note: The images are sort of like borders?? I hope they don't bother you. And there are a lot of grammar errors so 🧍🏻‍♀️

Introduction

Dreams can be used to communicate and discover important things about yourself. The process happens when the deepest part of your subconscious, that processes the dream state, sends messages to you - which can be symbols, actions, people, or images. What happens in a dream is usually not meaningless, but it can be confusing at times! These messages are meant to help you evaluate and discover what you are doing right and wrong.

Dreams can consist of personal experiences which are why when your subconscious messages you, it can consist of things that are personal to you. (Such as memories, beliefs, and other things like fantasies and expectations.) This is why if you learn the meanings of your dreams and discover how to use them, you can become better at what you do and achieve a higher level of inspiration and encouragement.

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“When you go to sleep, where do you really go?”    ― Brian Lovestar

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The way to unlock the meanings of your dreams is to realize that

¹ They are not a one-way experience in which your dream self bombards you with information.

² Dreams are not lectures, they are dialogues between your conscious and subconscious minds. The dialogue is created from your thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Your dream self then uses this information to create visual pictures to show you what you feel and how you perceive things.

Once you begin to interpret your dreams you will recognize attributes that may not be serving you in the best way possible/positive way. Once you interpret your dreams and learn - you’ll find it easier to face fears and overcome personal challenges. With more practice, you can learn to program and/or “incubate” your dreams to address a very specific problem. Because dreams generally have multiple levels of meaning, the more work, and effort you do, the better.

Why do we dream?

This has no definitive answer, though as far as speculation goes - it's to rejuvenate and repair the body. Others say it’s purely phycological; to review the daily events, relieve the mind, and to release emotions. Here are a few explanations...

Compensation

Carl Jung, a psychologist, believes that we dream to compensate for underdeveloped personalities. His reason is it may explain why the dreaming behavior of some is obviously different from the ‘them’ they personify while awake.

Processing

This suggests that dreams organize and process the conscious and unconscious mind that it received during the day. In other words “refreshing the mind.” And again, in other words, “rebooting/turning it off and on again.”

Coping

Ernest Hartmann, a psychiatry professor, suggests that dreams are projected by certain emotions. The new material is “weaved” into the memory of said dreamer in ways to help cope. In ways such as stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, etc.

Activation Synthesis

In this theory, Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley say that dreams are due to “sensory-motor signals.” These areas activate small parts of the brain that affect memory, emotions, and physical feelings. In this, it creates dreams in relation to the sensations and signals sent.

Resolution

Some scientists believe in this theory: the theory that dreaming is a problem-solving use. They suggest that when we sleep, our brain continues to process all issues of concern that we deal with in our waking hours. In this, it makes up solutions.

So what does happen when we sleep? That we know of?

When you go to bed at night you are alert. The reason is that your brain is still producing a small signal - a beta wave. As you begin to fall asleep these waves slow down and become ‘Alpha Waves.’ When this happens you might experience what’s called “Hypnagogia.” This is the experience of auditory and visual hallucinations that make it hard for you to fall into a “deep sleep.” As others may know it, it can cause Sleep Paralysis and Lucid Dreaming! As Google says: “Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep in humans: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. Mental phenomena that occur during this “threshold consciousness” phase include lucid thought, lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.” During the process of attempting this...some people reported hearing their name called, seeing random patterns, and body jerks (which are called myoclonic jerks.) When you’re in this stage it’s as if you’re fighting to stay awake. But actually, this is the first step of sleep.

Every night your body switches between a cycle of REM and NREM states. This happens around every 90 minutes or so, you switch between light sleep and deep sleep and the cycle continues. It supposedly happens around 6 times a night (but varies depending on how long you sleep at night.) The changes between REM and NREM are found by the change of your heart rate, brain activity, muscle tension, and body temperature.

NREM Sleep

State one: In this stage, you should begin to drift off. Your muscles relax, your body temp and blood pressure decrease, and you breathe slowly. As the production of Alpha waves begin to slow, your awareness noise, light, and feeling begin to zone out. Your eyes would exhibit slow movements and this is an easy state to awake you from.

State two: If stage one is undisturbed, state two will enter the stage. In this, you will feel a deeper sense of relaxation and like before… All blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and temp decrease. Your brain produces slower theta waves which will soon introduce “sleep spindles.” Sleep spindles are higher forms of activity. This process usually lasts 10-20 minutes.

State three: This is a deeper form of sleep. You couldn’t be awakened very easily from this state. Yet again temp, blood, and heart rate decrease. Your brain should still be producing theta waves, which gradually change to lower and larger delta waves.

State four: State four is when you are sleeping deeply now but not dreaming. In this stage, it’s difficult to be awoken due to your body’s sensitivity level. In this stage, most of your brain waves are delta waves now.

Back To Rem

Around 20 minutes after being in stage 4 of NREM, your cycle goes back to states 2 and 3. But you won't return to stage one and wake up. Instead, you will just go to REM sleep. This is called “prime dream mode.” The electrical waves/movements in your brain put you in a state similar to being awake. Your eyes will move from behind the lids. Research says this is because your mind is focusing on the dreams. During this, your heart rate speeds up, oxygen increases and so does your temp. After this REM is induced and what is commonly referred to as Sleep Paralysis will begin. This is when all muscles in the body are immobilized. As far as we know - it’s believed to prevent us from “acting out” in our dreams and hurting ourselves.

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Side Note

This happens multiple times a night. The more time you enter State 4 sleep, the more rejuvenation you receive. The more time you spend in sleep, the less time that 3 and 4 will happen and gives you more time to spend in REM/dreaming stage. Also, from the reading, they say early morning dreams are more vivid and happen longer.

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End of the dreaming

When you begin to wake up, you’ll experience “hypnopompia.” This is very similar to hypnagogia, This stage leaves you disoriented and makes you feel “loopy.” It could make you feel like there is pressure on your chest and sometimes causes you to feel, see, and hear things. Such as someone walking into your room and standing there. This process can be described as your mind waking up before your body does. Many times this does happen, but we have no memory of it ever happening. But when people do remember they describe it as frightening or disturbing. If you do happen to experience this, it’s said to remain calm and your body will eventually wake up.

How can you recall your dreams?

The first good step is to keep the visual fresh in your mind! As well, try to remember as many details as possible. Despite whether you only remember fragments or “none at all.” There are a few fun activities you can do!

Window of Opportunity

This method is intended to improve your observational skills, which does improve dream recall. Pick a comfortable spot to sit in, specifically near a window. You need the window. Take a few moments to unwind and relax. Just let your gaze look wherever you like - as long as you're looking at what’s out there. Notice as much detail as you can while being focused. BUT do not feel stressed by it. Don’t “worry” about it either. Just focus on the details. Take in as much as you can like… what color is the sky? Are the trees yellow and brown or green? Are there people? If so, what do they look like? What are they wearing? Once you are done with the scene and you feel comfortable, bring out a notebook and write down every bit of information you remember. It doesn’t matter the order and neither does it if you don’t remember something specific. It can be general things if that’s all you remember. Also, note the emotions you felt as you looked at certain things. Were you tired? Happy? Wanting this to be over? Write that down. If you’re artistic, you may sketch it! Sometimes sketching the scene may help you remember things you didn’t recall before.

Dream it up a bit

After this exercise, you might want to do better/enhance the skill. When you do, you should try being “more creative.” How so? Make it more “dreamier.” Pretend you are actually there in the scene. Strolling a path, smelling the roses, looking at the lake, etc. Once you’re done, jot it down. Remember to do this in the present tense. Write the details of what you saw and then implement yourself into it - just as you imagined.

Rewrite

If gazing out of a window is not something you want to do. There is another way! To do so you need to recall an event that happened in your day and pretend like it was a dream! Write it down in the present tense. Here’s an example: You went to eat lunch. Since you did you need to ask these questions:

•What time do I leave and arrive?

•What am I wearing?

•What’s the weather like?

•What day of the week is it?

•How am I feeling?

•Do I speak to someone?

•How do I travel?

•Am I alone?

You can do this for however long you’d like. Recalling all of these details as if they were a dream helps your mind remember said dreams.

Suggestion/Affirmations

Yep! Suggestion! This is effective and simple. All you have to do is, very often, suggest to yourself that you WILL remember your dreams. You can post reminders on your phone, ask someone to say “hey you're going to remember your dreams” every so often, or even use a “suggestion trigger.” A suggestion trigger is something to remind you to repeat your phrase. A good “suggestion trigger” is whenever you check the time!

Dream Journals and Sleep

Dream journals are your own personal journal and there is no “right or wrong” way to keep one. It’s made based on what you observe from your dreams. Simply put. The most important part of keeping one is that you feel comfortable with it. Here are a few small suggestions before going to bed:

Pick one that suits you.

Yes, it may be nice to buy one of those fancy dream journals that are marketed as such. But you may get it and spend money on something you really didn’t like. So go with what suits you and makes you comfortable.

Prepare yourself and your place.

Avoid anything strenuous before bed and avoid anything that might disrupt your sleep cycle. If you are a tidy type and need a clean room, then tidy before bed. Be sure the room is the right temperature for you and get into something cozy. You may be too lazy to do so but this will help your sleep and your remembrance of detail. It will also make sure you won’t be distracted by small annoying things.

Place the journal near you when you sleep.

Also, keep a pen! If you wake up at night you can write it ASAP.

Before going to bed, open to a new page.

Note where you are and where you live, the date, the time, etc. Leave a space at the top so you can title it later depending on the dream you had. Summarize all events of that day you can think of and write down your reminder phrase! It is optional if you want to include your mood and your health state. Before going to bed, repeat your reminder phrase

Upon Waking Up

Set your clock 15 minutes earlier than your normal wake time. This gives you more time to write your details. If possible, wake up to classical music or radio. Alarms cause sudden noises and sudden noises have been proven to make you forget dream memory upon waking up. As you begin to wake up, lie down, and keep your eyes shut. This will help “cement” the details into your subconscious. (Supposedly.) Without trying to change or manipulate any thoughts, try to recall the details of your dream When you feel comfortable enough, start writing anything you remember. Write in the present tense. Try to relive the dream as you write it. You can start anywhere in the dream, even go backward. The more important aspect is keeping somewhere to relive. Once you finished you should write the time you woke up and choose a title. Assigning a title and table of contents will help your mind's ability to make connections.

Dreamwork during the day

If you couldn’t recall your dream, take some time (when you can) to write about what your day as if it were a dream. Just like what we mentioned above. To “enhanced” this exercise you can imagine that you really did recall something. For example (come from the book): “I awake with a vague feeling of having been in a sunny place. There are brightness and warmth.”

Dream Incubation. What is it? And how do I use it?

Around the world there are places called “Dream temples” These temples were made in the honor of Asklepios, the god of healing. Snakes were allowed to move freely around these temples because it was believed they were secret symbols to evoke the powers of gods. As you may know, there is a popular symbol of snakes. The Caduceus! It’s two snakes wrapped around a staff. This is mainly based on the symbolism that snakes are “healers.” Both emotional and physical. Dream temples were most often placed in a rural area away from loud places. Many people would travel, even from long distances, to stay in these places to receive answers or enlightenment. These temples had a set intention for visitors/seekers to clarify the outcome they wanted. Because of the focus and encouragement received from the temples, it’s said it’s not unusual to receive the specific message they looked for. Not all cultures and places had these temples, but it didn’t stop them from Dream Incubation. (More on that in a minute). The Egyptians wrote the questions they wanted on linen and tied it around the wrist while meditating. Some soaked it in oil and burned it with incense while praying. Then they went to sleep, expecting the answer.

As you know, these days you can’t go to your local supermarket and pass by a dream temple. But, dream incubation is still widely practiced. People still to this day to "program" their dreams.

Your Temple

When trying to induce your routine to practice dream incubation, it can be simple or complex. Whatever you find comfortable. The temple of yours can be anywhere you find comfortable and where you are willing to practice the routine. (Such as writing, scripting, daydreaming, etc). But the main idea is to focus on your desired message.

Here are a few steps:

•Choose your phrase

•Form a clear intention

•Prepare your mind

•Get comfy

•Relax

•Visualize your dream’s solution (Ex: reading it, having the advice handed to you, seeing the answer played out in your very own personal “dream drama.”)

•Think about your reaction to the answer

Incubating dreams

When incubating your dreams you need a pre-set idea. Where do you want to be? In what way do you want your answer given? What symbols represent this? Afterward, start daydreaming about it, try to feel whatever it is that would be around you. Choose phrases that will affirm that it’s what you will dream of. Repeat that as many times possible. Often reflect on how it would feel being there and when you wake up and log as usual. But because you are programming this yourself - there may be nothing to interpret. But it will induce what you wanted to see. (A/N. As I’m reading this book and typing these notes I'm realizing how close they were to figuring out the shifting process. I-. Bye-). But take this moment to think through what happened, there may have been a messaged slipped in.

Lucid Dreams (Fun Fact!)

Believe it or not, the earliest record of lucid dreaming was recorded in the 4th century B.C. This happened when Aristotle, himself, was writing his work ‘On Dreams.’ He said quote on quote “For often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.” In 1867 Hervey de Saint-Denys wrote “Dreams and How to Guide Them.” This book was intended to show you the techniques he used to achieve a state of realization.

To Lucid Dream

When you lucid dream, you can do anything you please when you realize it is nothing but a dream. So how can you tell if it's a lucid dream? How do you lucid dream? Well, there are multiple ways.

Record it.

Record what you remember. Like we talked about with a dream journal.

Power of suggestion.

Even a simple phrase that “I am aware I am dreaming.” Is simple enough! Repeat this during the day and at night.

Checking your reality.

A commonly favored thing is “reality checks.” This requires you to test your surroundings and ask if they are real or not. If you notice something is off, it’s possible you once played it off. But if you looked closer, it was a dream.

Look for inconsistencies.

It’s found that a few things do not remain consistent in a dream. For example lights, watches, the time, sounds, etc. Because these changes are not normal, you know it’s just a dream.

Now that there are tips to know if you’re in a dream; Here are some to help you practice lucid dreaming/become in the state.

Visualize your everyday life (when awake) like a dream! Convince yourself as every small thing is just a dream. Whenever you’re doing something, take a look around and think of it as a dream. Believe that everything you do can be changed because you will it. Daydreaming the small things have changed will help as well. The tree outside? It’s not dead. It’s in full bloom! These practices are intended to help you make conscious and unconscious choices.

[afoolforatook]

Love is Being Scared and Loving Anyway Ch. 1 Expanded Trigger Warning (revised)

While working on the trigger warning list for chapter 2 I looked back and the one for chapter 1 and hated how it was formatted and felt basically unreadable even for me. So, here’s an updated version that hopefully reads a bit easier. 

(Hopefully chapter 2 should be ready soon, the Omni is just being a bit of a slog)

Here is an explanation of how this fic is formatted and what the versions are.

Or you can just go straight to the fic. 

Clover’s pov is chapter 1

Omniscient (Eye to Eye) is chapter 2

Qrow’s pov is chapter 

If you are worried about triggers, I suggest reading in the order they are posted, and stop at whatever version you feel comfortable with. If you aren’t worried about triggers I suggest reading Omni first and then Clover, and then Qrow.  

This is a pretty emotionally heavy fic, and one of the reasons I did the multiple versions was so that there could be options for anyone worried about triggers. Each version on AO3 has a short description of the trigger warnings relevant to that version, but I wanted to go into a bit more detail for anyone who wanted it, and didn’t want to put a wall of text in the chapter notes each time. So this is all the trigger notes for each version, as well as a more complete list of general tags for the chapter. 

As always, if you feel I’ve missed something, or that there is a better tag for something I have covered, please let me know. :)

Ch 1 - Generals tags

Characters - Qrow Branwen, Clover Ebi, Marrow Amin, Ruby Rose, Yang Xiao Long, Summer Rose

Relationships - Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi, Past Qrow Branwen/Summer Rose

Content - Hurt/comfort, Vent/therapy fic, Fair Game, Hummingbird

Broad warnings - Panic attacks, PTSD, Flashbacks, Past character death, Ch 12 mention, Ch 12 description, Clover death mention, Ch 12 fix it, Ch 12 was Qrow’s nightmare, Depression, Anxiety, Panic disorder, Insecurity, Grief, Loss of partner, Past alcoholism mention, Alcoholism recovery, Dissociating, Trauma, Nightmares

Individual versions

I’m only going to expand on the ones that are a bit loose or less straightforward, so things like ‘Racing thoughts’, are pretty straight forward so explaining would just be spoilers. These, and warnings already explained in earlier versions are listed at the bottom (marked with the version that explains them).

Clover

Altered perception of reality/Flashbacks/Hallucinations/PTSD

 - All of these really are for the same thing but I wanted to be overly cautious. None of them fit the instance perfectly, but it is generally Qrow misinterpreting things in his panicked state. Seeing, hearing things not as in actual hallucinations but brain still putting everything in the context of his panic/not being fully aware.

Blood mention - Pretty minimal in this version.

Claustrophobia - Not necessarily technically claustrophobia, but some descriptions that I thought could be triggering.

Difficulty breathing - Due to anxiety, or perceived trouble breathing.

Dissociation - Two reasons, could apply to Qrow for the same reason as above. And for Clover, for using intentional dissociation as a coping mechanism.

Hyper-awareness/Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)

- Just general over sensitivity, awareness, inability to process during panicked state.

Hypercritical - Overly high expectations of self, perfectionism.

Nausea - More just a description of  feeling off.

Paranoia - Really more anxiety related over worrying, apprehension, but again, thought could fall under this umbrella.

Trichotillomania - Again, not technically, but actions that could be reminiscent.

Unconscious self-harm - Felt like this was the best way to put this, but knew some people might not know exactly what I meant. This is regarding Qrow. He isn’t unconscious but rather, during a panic attack he unknowingly hurts himself, and it’s not at all serious.

(I say it this way because this is how I have described similar instances I have had - basically this is “Qrow hurt itself in its confusion” the tag) 

Anxiety | Coping mechanisms | False confidence | Grief | Hyper-awareness  | Insecurity | Intrusive thoughts | Loss of partner | Minor injury (Qrow’s) | Panic attack | Panic | Racing thoughts | Self-loathing | Summer death mention | Touch sensitivity

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Omniscient aka Eye-to-eye

Body horror - I think this is a bit of a stretch, but again, being overly careful. Mostly for descriptions of feelings/bodily awareness that could be disturbing. One or two places that lean a little more toward bloody/gory (but not much).

Ch 12 That scene mention/Clover death description/Clover death mention - Vague/minor short mention, minimal visual/emotional description, not graphic. 

Dermatillomania - Same as claustrophobia/trichotillomania.

Difficulty speaking/nonverbal episode - Similar to phobias, not quite there but Qrow has a very hard time making himself speak.

Feeling like dying - Description of what Qrow is feeling as he thinks he’s dying (panic).

Alcoholism mention (very minor) | Altered perception of reality (see above in Clover) | Anxiety | Blood mention | Claustrophobia (see above in Clover) | Difficulty breathing (see above in Clover) | Dissociation (see above in Clover) | Flashbacks (see above in Clover) | Grief | Hallucinations (see above in Clover) | Hyper-awareness (see above in Clover) | Intrusive thoughts | Loss of partner | Minor injury (Qrow’s) | Nausea mention (see above in Clover) | Nightmare/Night terror |  PTSD (see above in Clover) | Pain description | Panic attack | Panic | Paranoia (see above in Clover) | Racing thoughts | SPD (see above in Clover) | Summer death mention | Touch sensitivity | Trichotillomania (see above in Clover) | Unconscious self-harm (see above in Clover) | Vomit mention

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Qrow

CH 12 That scene description/Ch 12 mention /Clover death description/Clover death mention - Slightly more than in omniscient, longer mention, more visual/emotional description but still nothing outright graphic. 

Suicidal thoughts - This one’s a little border, or at least what most people would think of as border, even though it still is a form of suicidal thought. It’s nothing in any way actionable or planning, but wishing/expecting to die during a trauma. 

Altered perception of reality (see above in Clover ) | Blood mention | Body horror (see above in Omniscient, though this version gets the closest to actually fitting the term) | Claustrophobia (see above in Clover) | Dermatillomania (see above in Omniscient) | Difficulty breathing (see above in Clover) | Difficulty speaking (see above in Omniscient) | Dissociation (see above in Clover) | Feeling like dying (see above in Omniscient) | Flashbacks (see above in Clover) | Grief | Hallucinations (see above in Clover) | Hyper-awareness (see above in Clover) | Intrusive thoughts | Loss of partner | Minor injury (Qrow’s) | Nausea mention (see above in Clover) | Nightmare/Night terror | Nonverbal episode (see above in Omniscient) | PTSD (see above in Clover) | Pain description | Panic attack | Paranoia (see above in Clover) | Racing thoughts | SPD (see above in Clover) | Self-loathing | Summer death description (minor) | Summer death mention | Trichotillomania (see above in Clover) | Unconscious self-harm (see above in Clover) | Vomit mention

[transcriptroopers]

I'm planning a story with an English character who joined the army during WW1 (because he didn't want to be considered cowardly) but eventually became disillusioned with war and with the British Empire. He was born physically disabled but managed to conceal the disability in order to enlist. Are there any disabilities for which this would be plausible?

I actually like this question a lot

I think my top pick is Ehlers-Danlos syndromes. They present in many different ways but can include hypermobility in the joints, quick to sprain and bruise but slow to heal, early onset arthritis, and scoliosis, which even if mild enough to overlook can cause respiratory issues. Hippocrates described the condition in 400 B.C., but coincidentally it only started gaining recognition right around WWI. In that era it was much easier to lie your way into service, so with EDS being practically unknown I can see someone having all of these problems in childhood and still getting in because it’s not a real diagnosis yet.

A person like that would probably be treated very poorly while enlisted. People who hurt themselves easily need down time frequently. Their hard-working comrades eventually start thinking they’re doing it on purpose. I think this would play well with the character not wanting to be seen as cowardly because inevitably it’s going to come up when he gets injured.

While searching I happened to find a lot of personal anecdotes from modern day people with EDS who enlisted before they were diagnosed and then refused disability because EDS is an inherited condition so none of their injuries were covered, so there’s an angle to play with as well.

You might consider epilepsy, specifically someone who has chronic focal aware seizures, which in the past were called partial seizures. Because the seizure is affecting only one hemisphere of the brain, it is usually less intense and only last a minute or two, though they can escalate to full seizures. The subject is usually conscious and often remembers the seizure afterward, which I think would be important for storytelling purposes.

Furthermore, the symptoms can be easily dismissed or overlooked. Here’s a partial list from Wikipedia:

-sudden and inexplicable feelings of fear, anger, sadness, happiness or nausea

-sensations of falling or movement

-experiencing of unusual feelings or sensations

-altered sense of hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing, and tactile perception (sensory illusions or hallucinations),

-feeling as though the environment is not real (derealization) or dissociation from the environment or self (depersonalization)

-a sense of spatial distortion—things close by may appear to be at a distance

These are all #JustSoldierThings~ that service members deal with because they’re in a traumatic environment. Especially in WWI era, I can easily see someone regularly having partial seizures and getting away with it. Not to mention it’s a common side effect of traumatic brain injuries so like... no one would really be suspicious.A third option might be Huntington’s. Like EDS it’s been known for hundreds of years but has only been recognized recently. I think back then it was just called chorea but was eventually named Huntington’s because of this guy

Internet consensus is that symptoms usually begin between 30 and 50 but can present in early childhood. It a genetic condition and there was and is no cure. Like epilepsy, many of the early symptoms of Huntington’s would not be suspicious to see in a soldier (neither would some of the late, either) and as it was not a well understood diagnosis, it would be easy to hide during recruitment as long as the recruit was in the earlier stages.

Huntington’s is characterized by gradual loss of motor control, (similar to Parkinson’s) uncontrollable limb movement, decreased cognitive function, memory loss, difficulty swallowing and speaking, and mood changes. Life expectancy is around 20 years after symptoms show so that’s something to keep in mind.

I hope maybe one of these three will give you what you need? hmu again if you want I wouldn’t mind hearing more about your thoughts :D

-Kingsley

[harloqui]

You know what, it’s a good time as any to give an update on what’s been happening regarding me and shifting

So a couple of years back when everyone who was a shifter happened to come out here on Tumblr I was still trying to investigate what had happened to me regarding shifting, and came here to check out the communities. A few years ago before that I had had a weird partial-shift event type thing occur at night, an event in which I saw a part of my body alter its form. It had happened, unprovoked, and it was definitely a change of some sort. It was not a hallucination, as I don’t experience hallucinations (it would be extremely weird to have a vivid hallucination of shifting and never again be able to trigger it) and considering at that time I was thinking about stepping away from shifting instead of moving forward with it, I doubt it was “wishful thinking” or wanting to believe very hard.

Now, I did go and investigate further. Eventually a lot of shifters started coming to Amino, and I learned a couple of things about shifting. I know I’ve said it before, but any type of nonphysical nonhuman creature you identify as is not something you can shift into. It’s not the same as a shifted form - they are two different things. Though I feel right now maybe if you have the core ability to shift it might be possible to shift (in a minor way) into what you identify as non-physically, like how you can experience minor near-physical or physical aspects of say, a wolf theriotype via sensory shifting if you have a sensory disorder or something, but you won’t be growing a wolf’s nose cells and tracking down your neighbors. Basically via psychosomatic effects you might be able to alter your body towards a kintype/nonphysical nonhuman identity, even towards shifting it a tiny bit if you’re a shifter, but you won’t reach that state fully. Understanding the differences in full helped me clarify some things I had been questioning and trying to sort out about myself.

Anyway, I learned more about shifting, and what is and isn’t possible. Most experienced shifters don’t believe you can partially shift, which is fine. I think it’s possible, but in the way I described above, not just willy-nilly however. Many also don’t believe in being able to make oneself shift, which also makes sense. I don’t really care to debate much unless I shift myself, and in the meantime will pay attention to the theories that seem to make the most scientific sense to me.

More importantly, I was able to learn more about my shifted form, or what I now suspect it to be. Knowing more about what is or isn’t possible from reliable sources helped me figure out what I could expect and what would be reasonable, and then later on, a few months ago I figured out that it was probably hyena. While trying to shift (for experimentation at this point and trying to replicate the first shift I went through) it just came as a vision, but as a very “physical” one if that makes sense. These feelings have remained even after that initial attempt. It makes sense, I just needed some sort of “confirmation”.

Now I’m just waiting and living my life. If a shift happens it happens, I might try and provoke one sometime/attempt a shift for my own pleasure at times, but I’m not like, waking up every day hoping today is the day. If it happens it happens, if it doesn’t no biggie. Am I 100% sure of this? No, I won’t ever be sure until a full shift happens, but this is what I suspect and know right now. 

[self-critical-automaton]

Whats Been Going On With Me Lately

So basicly the TLDR is:

I’ve been super ill in weird and new brain ways since about mid-december, when withdrawal from my antidepressants resulted in strange intense psychological events, and I’ve been dealing with the fallout and day-to-day distress ever since. I’m terrified that i might have suffered permanent alterations/damage to my mental state, but who can say.

Details under the cut for anyone who wants to know how ive been doing, or wants to hear about what happens when you quit a high dose of fluoxetine cold turkey after five or six years.

Or for anyone who is going through something similar and wants some info/hope, since withdrawal experiences seem to be super idiosyncratic and variable and its almost impossible to find detailed descriptions.

I’d really appreciate it being read, esp. by people in my life, but dont feel compelled or whatever idk i dont make the rules but srsly please read it if you can it took a lot of time and effort

PS: this and several other articles on that blog were a huge help to me getting through the first couple phases, if you’re having trouble with withdrawal please go read PPS: fine to reblog, in fact please do

In 2017 I started getting painful physical side effects from my antidepressants, which gradually got worse until in lateish-2018 I decided to stop taking them outright. Everyone ever says you shouldn’t quit antidepressants cold-turkey, and they are right, but I’d been taking them inconsistently due to the pain, and I was beginning to suspect they’d stopped helping me anyway, so it seemed the best option.

I quit in probably mid-October and for a couple months felt much the same as usual, but then around the 13th of December it all kicked off. At first I had no idea what was happening, and I thought I was suffering a sudden and intense flu coinciding with a bad depressive spike, but after a couple days I figured out that withdrawal can be offset by weeks or months in rare cases, and decided this is what must be happening. That first round of Withdrawal Time had a few soft-edged but distinct phases (lasting about a week each), and I went through by far the worst experience in my entire life, closely followed by the second-worst and then third-worst.

Round One Start! Phase One: intense existential dread

It kicked of very suddenly, around the 13th december, getting rapidly worse over a couple days. I was paralysed with fear as my mind sunk into thinking in infinite circles, unable to do anything other but endlessly contemplate and debate morbid philosophical topics, forced to confront the inevitability of death, emptiness of life, terror of oblivion, impossibility of afterlife, and so on. I also suffered sensory experiences similar to those ive heard described by people who take drugs like LSD, or very severe fever dreams. Sensations of expanded perception, becoming trapped in imaginary scenarios on other planes, that sort of thing.

In this phase I ate almost nothing, and over that week lost 4 or 5 kg. I also had some flu symptoms, mostly as fevers and chills, and could ony, really sleep in short bursts of a couple hours each. There was very little I could safely occupy myself with, as almost all media (books, games, film, fiction and nonfiction, everything really) would in some way trigger me into thinking about an existential topic, and then the terror would resume. I spent what time I could working to fix the problems with my life that I had suddenly become aware of (my social isolation, my medial issues, my mental health, etc), so I made a lot of phone calls, doctor visits, and applied to some mental health counseling services. I also started looking for avenues to make friends and acquaintances online and in person, and did a lot of research on antidepressant withdrawal.

Towards the end of this phase, the dread got more manageable and began to ease off, and I found I could play simple puzzle games to help occupy myself during the day. Listening to certain podcasts also was a source of relief and distraction. However, things remained bad in the morning and evenings, and I ended up referring to these times as ‘morning hell’ and ‘evening hell’. Also, I began to keep a basic daily log of my symptoms.

Phase Two: generalized anxiety

As I segued into this phase, the existential dread mostly withdrew during the day, leaving instead a sense of severe generalized anxiety. I’ve had issues with anxiety in the past, but it’s always been event-related or social, so Generalized Anxiety Disorder style anxiety was an interesting addition to my mental health cocktail. I still suffered the existential dread, but primarily during the Morning and Evening Hells, and as occasional spikes during the day. Mostly, I felt like it was off to one side somewhere, and felt anxiety about thinking about existential topics.

I got little done, but was able to occupy myself with podcasts, housework, simple games, and (oddly enough) Star Trek: The Original Series. Almost anything else I tried would worsen the anxiety, and threaten to trigger existential dreads. During this time I started sleeping more normally, but also began waking every night with chest pains and leg pains, which of course caused a great deal of anxiety about heart issues and blood clots. I also began to feel like I had begun to ‘wake up’ after having sleepwalked through the past year or so.

Phase Three: misc badfeels and weird sensory effects

As phase 2 segued into this one, around christmas day, the anxiety started to recede during the day. I’d get a window of safety varying from half an hour to a few hours, usually starting in the early afternoon. I began to leave the house more, going for walks with my partner, which could occupy me safely during bad feeling times. During those windows, I often still felt bad, but it felt like a ‘normal’ bad, like depression and ennui, rather than the very active generalized anxiety or severe dread. I also began to be able to read again, and to play games more widely. I committed to attending some local social events (some board games/RPG things, and a support group) and mostly tried to get on with life. 

I was frequently quite sluggish and slow, and didn't usually get much work done, even napping occasionally. As my days improved, my nights worsened, with bad sleep and bad dreams. I would also have odd brief sensory effects, such as hallucinations and waking dreams. For the first time since withdrawal started, I began to worry that I was slipping backwards and getting worse again. Up until that point, I had felt like, as awful as I was feeling, there was a slow but consistent improvement.

By early January I was having inconsistent bouts of the existential stuff and the generalized anxiety in the day, but looking back probably not as intensely as in the earlier phases.

Phase Four: inconsistent rehash

Phase four was similar to phase three, except without the consistency that phase three had (at least earlier on) of ‘morning bad, day safe, evening bad’. It also lasted longer than the ‘about a week’ of previous phases. I had ups and downs of general bad feelings throughout the day, with occasional spikes or longer bouts of existential fear or generalized anxiety, and I developed an aversion to going to bed (as most mornings would feel worse than evenings). I usually slept badly, and I started waking up during what I’m pretty sure were sleep-panic-attacks an hour or so after going to sleep. Chest pains and so on were very common and worrying, so I talked to the doctor a lot and ended up on some cardio waiting lists.

I had some depressive episodes which felt very much like the kind of depressive episodes I’ve had over my life, and about the same topics, though more intensely. It was almost comforting, in a back-to-normal sort of way.

Frankly, this whole phase felt like a random jumble of previous phase symptoms and pre-withdrawl mental health stuff, almost like dimming lightbulbs on an old electrical system, fading in and out and going on and off randomly and unpredictably.

Towards the end of January, I had a bad bout of flu, but during that time I felt a lot better in mental health terms. I don’t know if this was due to the distraction of a big obvious ‘thing to survive’ or if it was a natural upswing as part of the arc of that phase. After I got over the flu, I had a couple days of existential stuff reasserting itself, and I was worried that it was a second bout of Phase One, but I stopped recording my log on the 5th of February, so it’s hard to recall anything past this.

Interstitial Period

I’m pretty sure that for most of February, I felt ‘back to normal��, and was feeling more-or-less how I had been before withdrawal kicked off. That said, my capacity to occupy myself has not really recovered. I’m occasionally able to play games or read, but I often have a bad sense of ennui. This may be my natural yearly Seasonal Affective Disorder, or a natural depressive episode (I have consistently if infrequently had times where I’m unable to occupy myself and suffer ennui, just as part of being a depressed person), but I’ve not had one this long before.

I have a strong fear that my cognition/way of being/mental state has been permanently altered by that first phase, that it in some way ‘opened my eyes’ and now I will never be able to go back to how I was. I’m scared that I might never be free of this existential dread lurking in the back of my mind, but also trying to dissemble, forget, or distract myself feels like a foolish naivety. Its something we all have to face, so postponing the inevitable is pointless, but also I can’t overcome or accept it, so I’m trapped in a limbo.

Round Two?

After feeling mostly ’back to normal’ for a while, I’ve been having some bad times again. For about a week or so (end of febuary/beginning of march), I’ve been having existential fears and the ‘big mix of generalized bad feeling’ again, on and off during the day, and especially in mornings/evenings. I was very afraid that it was the beginning of a downslope into a full repeat of this entire cycle, but it’s been pretty consistent so far, rather than getting worse.

I’m hoping that this is indeed Round Two, and that its just a lot less bad than Round One, which would be consistent with what I’ve read about this stuff.

Final Thoughts

Phase one was the worst thing ive gone through in my life, but on good days I feel somewhat optimistic that it’s had a ‘rock bottom’ kind of effect, that I can find some positive things to come out of it.

It’s given me some perspective, and it’s helped me come out of a sleepwalking time in my life. I feel what i’m missing in my life much more keenly (social isolation/ lack of friends, lack of passion, lack of purpose/drive/meaning in my life), but I’m also able to work on them to some extent for the first time in years.

That said, I know these take a lot of time and work to fix, but it’s hard not to look at the glacially slow progress i’ve made as ‘no progress in basically three months’, and sink back into the things-will-never-get-better-so-why-try kind of depression.

I’m gonna keep trying, though.

[mysticmessengertrash606]

Left Brain, Right Brain|Yoosung

Summary: Yoosung is in Starbucks losing his mind from loss of sleep and studying too much. His left and right brain are at war and they are represented by his close friends Jumin and Seven.You talk to him and hit it off with some pickup lines.

Pairing: Yoosung x Reader

Warnings: Swearing + Inaproptiate themes? There is mention of sex and sex parts? Idk how to describe it but if you’ve been on Tumblr for a while it should be fine lmao.

Yoosung was really sleep deprived and he didn’t have a clue where he was all he knew was that he had a cup of coffee in front of him. He even started having hallucinations.

Hello, patient 24602.

“Hi, I'm sorry.”

How are you feeling?

“Um, not great.”

Has the treatment been working?

“Uh, I don't think so, no.”

What are your remaining symptoms?

“I just—I internalize my feelings a lot. I have trouble articulating how I'm feeling to other people. I feel like I just—.”

So basically you're still a little bitch.

“Yes, very mature of you disembodied voice way up there.”

I was just joking

“Okay, just let's get to the point. What's wrong with me, please? Please.”

Your emotions and your logic are at war.

“Ok.”

Your creativity and your analysis are at war. And most simply, your left and right brain are at war.

“My left and my—”

To fix the problem we must separate them from each other.

“Sep—”

Splitting your neurological functions in 5... 4...

“Can we book an appointment or something?”

3...

“You just don't start counting down to major medical procedures.”

2... 1. This may hurt a bit.

“I don't even know what 'it' is.”

0.

“Just tell me what you're—.”

Isolation complete.

He put his head on the table and the people around him looked worried for him but did nothing to help him. He sits up and there are two people now sitting next to him. Well in his mind they were next to him but no one was actually next to him. One was wearing a suit and the other was in a hoodie and jeans.

The one in the suit stood up and the voice started talking again.

This is Yoosung's Left Brain: objective, logical, cold, analytical, aware of patterns, aware of trends, he's efficient, and a prick.

He rolls his eyes and sits while the other stands.

This is Yoosung's Right Brain: subjective, creative, sensory, aware of feelings, aware of people, he's emotional, and an idiot.

“That's your opinion. Just careful with opinions.”

Okay, boys, play nice.

Yoosung just sat in his spot watching them. Now they are both standing and suit guy starts talking.

“I am Jumin Han, I am the Left Brain. I work really hard 'til my inevitable death brain. You got a job to do, you better do it right, and the right way is with the left brain's might.” He gets pushed out of the way by the right brain.

“I like Oreos and pussy, yes, in that order! And I cried for at least an hour after watching "Toy Story 3". Woody! I am 707 The Right Brain, I have feelings. I'm a little all over the place But I'm lustful, trustful and I'm looking for somebody to love... Or put my penis in”

You walk in Starbucks in dire need of caffeine due to staying up all night working on homework.

“Here comes a female, here comes a female. Puff your chest out, take your phone and check your e-mail. Our evolutionary purpose is repopulate. So gather data now and see if she's a possible mate.” Jumin says staying by Yoosungs side. 707 runs to her side with heart eyes.

“Holy fuck I think she might be the one, there's something about her, I just can't describe it.“

“Tits,” Jumin says rolling his eyes.

“I am the earth, she is the glorious sun. I want her to trust me and I just want her to—how do I say this—sit on my face! Sit! Sit on my face!” Jumin pulls him away from you while you just stared at the menu not noticing Yoosung staring.

“Alright now, Right Brain, you're being insane.”

“No, Left Brain, I'm just being alive. You should try it, you might like it.“

“I worked hard to give him everything he cared about. You were worried about the things that he was scared about. I'm calm and collected when you act wild. I am the adult, you are the child.“

“You think you're the right one every time. You think you know everything but you don't know anything at all. Half of his problems were supposed to be mine. But you wanted everything. I hope that you're happy 'cause he's sure not.”

“Well, according to my calculations. I'm sorry, let me run the numbers again, um, you're a pussy.”

“Name calling? Really? You're gonna just do name calling?”

“I'm not calling names, alright. I'm just stating facts and the fact is you're a quivering pussy.”

“I'm the pussy? Well, at least I don't play with toys still, Ok...”

“Rubik's Cubes are not toys. They keep my spacial reasoning skills sharp.”

“Left Brain plays with toys! Look at you, Mr... you're a toy player.”

“Well, at least I did my fucking job, alright. I kept him working, I kept him productive. You were supposed to look after him. You were supposed to keep him emotionally stable through all this. Now you're trying to blame me for how he's feeling, how he's feeling! If he's feeling unhappy it's because you failed him. You did this to him, he hates you. I know he does. He fucking hates you!” Jumin pushed 707 and he trips falling over. Sobs fill the room but no one hears but Yoosung, “ Right Brain, look, I'm sorry, okay?”

“No, you’re not” 707 curls up still sobbing.

“Look, maybe there's something that we could do together.” Jumin kneels by his curled up body.

“Together?” 707 looks up at him.

“Take the best parts of both of us and put them together.”

“I'm listening.”

“It would let you let your feelings out, it would let me analyze. So you could man the themes; I'll man the form. It's something that George Carlin did, It's something that Steve Martin did. It's something special that we could both perform. Do you know what it is?” 707 looked confused but then his face lighted up.

“Juggling, we could juggle, and juggle our cares away!”

“It was... It was comedy, you, fuck it, we could do comedy together.”

Initiate reassembly.

“All right, Right Brain, we're gonna do comedy together, we gotta do comedy together.”

“All right, Left Brain, I'll do comedy with you.”

“Look, we can fix him like this—we can make him happy again. I promise, all right?”

5, 4, 3.

“Left Brain... Jumin, I love you.”

2. “I know.” 707 looks at him like tf you ain’t gonna say it back?

1. Experimentation complete.

You got your coffee and there was a student from your class there as well. Looking just as dead as you with a coffee sitting in front of him. Being you-you wanted to go check on him. So you sat across from him and his eyes moved to you and a blush formed on his face.

“You doin alright there buddy?” You sipped your coffee and you could see the panic in his eyes.

“Are you a campfire? Cause you're hot and I want s'more.” His eyes widen and he covers his mouth. When you laughed he looked at you his face as red as a tomato now.

“Oh, Jesus that was good! But, I got better,” You looked him in the eyes and say, “If you’re feeling down, can I feel you up?” You wink and he turns even redder than you thought possible. You two said bad pick up lines to each other until your coffee was gone and exchanged numbers. He walks you out and you are about to leave when he grabs your hand.

“So we’re friends, when do the benefits start to kick in?” You roll your eyes and walk away smiling.

[sciencespies]

Creating hallucinations without any drugs is actually surprisingly easy

https://sciencespies.com/humans/creating-hallucinations-without-any-drugs-is-actually-surprisingly-easy/

Creating hallucinations without any drugs is actually surprisingly easy

The human brain is a remarkable thing; our most complex machines are not even close to competing with our powers of higher consciousness and ingenuity. And yet, those 80 billion or so neurons are also incredibly fragile.

If the tiniest thing goes wrong with a particular connection – maybe something misfires, or a certain neural pathway is blocked – things can fall apart very quickly.

And, oddly enough, even without any injuries or structural malfunctions, the human brain can get weird all by itself – turns out, it’s surprisingly easy to trick it into seeing and hearing things that aren’t actually there.

We’re not talking about taking a bunch of drugs to make yourself hallucinate. The brain can do all that on its own - you just have to know how to manipulate it.

[embedded content]

As demonstrated by the guys in this 2016 Scam Nation video on YouTube, if you create a situation of intense sensory deprivation using some common household objects, you can induce some really strong hallucinations that mess with both your sense of sight and sound. 

You’re going to need:

Sheets of light, white paper

Cotton padding

Rubber bands

Stationery, including scissors, tape, a stapler, and string

A YouTube video of old television white noise or static that runs uninterrupted for at least 30 minutes

Noise-cancelling headphones

Watch the video to find out how they use each of these things to basically deprive themselves of any sensory input. The effects usually start to show after about 10 to 30 minutes.

After 20 minutes, the Scam Nation guys reported seeing “blooms of colour” – like those you see when you rub your eyelids – that would soon form shapes, such as dinosaur silhouettes, jellyfish, and the Eye of Sauron.

One heard screams, and the other heard laughter.

Sounds like nonsense? Well, sure, we have to take the word of two dudes on YouTube for this particular scenario, but what they’re doing actually follows the principles of a scientific phenomenon known as the Ganzfeld effect.

The Ganzfeld effect describes how when you’re exposed to “an unstructured, uniform stimulation field” – such as seeing blackness and hearing constant television static – your brain responds by amplifying neural noise in an effort to find missing visual signals.

This can result in both visual and aural hallucinations like the guys in the video describe. 

Of course, every person will experience the effect in different ways.

When Derek Muller from Veritasium tried his own version of sensory deprivation – locking himself in a pitch-black, ultra-quiet anechoic chamber for 45 minutes – he debunked the myth that the lack of stimulation would send you mad, but did report a few odd sensations. 

“Perhaps the weirdest thing I noticed was the sense of my heart,” he says.

“I just felt like it was pumping really hard, and I could feel, almost like the blood pushing up through me. It wasn’t like I was hearing it, it was like I was feeling it. And I was feeling as though, in a way, my heart was shaking my body. That was something weird.”

[embedded content]

In this situation, Derek didn’t exactly experience hallucinations, but what he describes with his heart does suggest his brain was amplifying things in the absence of any stimuli.

Interestingly, researchers demonstrated a similar effect in an experiment in 2015, where they asked volunteers to stare into each other’s eyes for 10 minutes straight.

“The participants in the eye-staring group said they’d had a compelling experience unlike anything they’d felt before,” Christian Jarrett reported for the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest at the time. 

It’s an imprecise science, to be sure, because every person’s brain responds differently to the weird things we throw at it (figuratively), but you could give the Scam Nation method a try and see what happens to you. Just, if the Supreme Being from Time Bandits gives you a hard time, don’t blame us, okay?

A version of this article was first published in April 2016.

#Humans

[scripttorture]

Hi, so my MC was born and raised for seven years in a huge underground complex with roughly 200 other girls, some of them had been kidnapped as babies or toddlers, some were born there as well. The group that raised them trained them to be assassins, so they were brought up with intense training in martial arts, mostly. The children were not allowed to talk to each other or really interact with each other, but they learned to read and talk in class. [1/4]

They also were made to watch some "arena fights" of older girls, that ended deadly. They were taught that they had to be strong and that was mostly defined by cruelty and being emotionless. If they misbehaved they were put in a small, soundproof, pitch black room for days at a time with only some water and bread and no sanitation. Other than that, they shared a bedroom with ~50 girls, so solitary confinement was meant as absolute punishment, not the norm. [2/4]How problematic would the reintegration be? My MC is 18 now and struggles with depression and anxiety and the generall feeling that she's not strong enough (=messed up view on what "strong" even is) and that she's not normal and doesn't fit in, etc. But what would her childhood be like? She and another girl she always protected were adopted by one of the soldiers that saved them and they were provided professional help all their lives, and are still in therapy. [3/4]I know that she'd struggle massivley with the hugeness of the world (though they've been taught a lot about the outside world, though mostly that it's bad) and the masses of other people, but what kind of behavior could I expect of her growing up? Thanks in advance ^^ [4/4] 

I think you need tore-think this scenario if you want your character to be able to act like asocialised, neurotypical human being and an assassin of any ability.

 Children brought upwithout people speaking to them, without interaction with other children (or byimplication people) and without much interaction with adults speaking to them, may not learn to speak.

 Trying to restrictnormal human interaction in such young children like this would be profoundlydamaging to their development. And it would be damaging in ways that wouldundermine their effectiveness as assassins. They would not be able to ‘pass’ asa normal person in any society. They would not be able to communicate withothers.

 I lived communally as achild, and also it strikes me as something that would be impossible to enforceif they’re living communally as you suggest.

 Essentially the wayyou’re describing the character at 18 sounds far too well-adjusted for the childhood you describe. I thinkthat leaves two options: either change the character at 18 or change herchildhood.

 If you want to changethe character at 18 I suggest looking up ‘Genie’ and other feral children.That’s the closest thing I can think of to the experience you’re describing.And it means none of these girlswould be able to fight effectively or function as assassins so you would alsohave to deal with why the adults involved chose to continue the ‘training’program when the result is no effective assassins.

 I think changing thecharacter’s childhood would mean less rewrites and a less drastic change toyour story.

 A lot of the abuse andneglect you describe is not only unnecessary but likely to undermine thecharacter’s effectiveness as an assassin hugely. If the point is to raise thesegirls to be effective killers then the lesstorture they go through the better the results will be.

 Using solitaryconfinement for long periods of time on young children- that is going to beintensely damaging to their physical and mental health. It will destroy theirmemories, their ability to learn, their ability to interact with adults andchildren, damage their eyesight and probably make them more susceptible todisease. That’s not a complete list and Ihave more information on solitary confinement in adults here. All currentresearch suggests the effects on children are much much worse.

 And what you describeisn’t solitary confinement, it’s closer to sensory deprivation. A form called‘Baldwin’s Box’ to be exact. Adultvolunteers generally can’t stay in these things longer than 24 hours. It isprofoundly almost uniquely damaging causing hallucinations, massive memory lossand (in extreme cases in adults)victims can lose the ability to recognise faces and ordinary objects.

 It also hugelyincreases the risk of these children dying because left inside for days they’relikely to self harm and an open wound in a box with no sanitation means aserious infection.

 These children would beunable to learn to read or fight if they were treated in this way. They wouldprobably be unable to look after themselves and would need carers.

 I do have a solution toall this and it’s kindness.

 Instead of abuse andsilence make the adults in her childhood loving,caring people. Have these girls raised being showered with gifts andaffection and praise. Have them unconditionally love the teachers and carers raising them. Have those teachersspeaking to their charges and playing with them.

 Have these loving, kindteachers, the people who have told all of these girls how wonderful and specialand beautiful they are, teach their charges that the world outside is awful. Have them grow up learning thatthe teachers and girls around them are the onlypeople they can expect kindness from.

 The people above ground?They’re animals. They’re cruel andhorrid and stupid and just so much lesser than all the beautiful girls downhere. They can’t be trusted. They’re child abusers and rapists and torturersand hundreds of other disgusting degenerate things. They all, each and everyone, deserve to die.

 All these special,beautiful, wonderful girls? They’ve all been rescued from a terrible place. Andreally, since they owe their teachers and each other so much, it’s only rightthat they do their duty. It’s only right that they help defend and supporttheir home. They’ve been saved andreally the teachers don’t ask for very much, they just want everyone to workhard and do their best.

 That is a regime I could see producingextremely effective assassins indeed.

 There’s a strong bondto the adults they’d work for, a strong bond to each other and a lot ofpositive reinforcement for learning the skills they’d need to be effective. Theyprobably wouldn’t suffer from any illnesses that would impair theirassassination abilities. The death rate would be low and the success rate high.

 These girls would‘graduate’ willing and able to do anything the teachers asked of them. Notthrough trying to suppress natural emotions and behaviours but by using them.

 This is how people arecontrolled and manipulated into doing horrible things. By creating a societyfor them, full of people they love and then telling them if they don’t obey they’ll lose everything.

 I think this wouldproduce someone a lot more like the character as you describe her at 18. She’sbeen ‘rescued’ young and found out everything she was taught was wrong. Herbeloved teachers were the monsters, not the people outside. And she’d strugglebecause she’d probably still love them.

 I can see a set up likethat leading to depression and anxiety and someone feeling generally out ofsynch with the world.

 She’d probably fallback on the training she had to blend in, mimicking behaviours and peoplearound her, interacting on a surface level because that’s what you’re ‘supposed’to do. She’d probably have a lot of trouble connecting with other people andwould be extremely socially isolated. But she might not initially appear thatway if she’s mimicking ‘normal’ 18 year old women’s behaviour, interacting witha lot of people but forming no real connections.

 I think she’s probablyat risk of falling into addiction and her training would probably make her verycapable of obtaining and hiding drugs or alcohol.

 Another thing I thinkshe might struggle with is feeling like a monster, like she’s fundamentallyunlovable and could never hope to find any real connection with anyone. Becauseif the people who raised her are actually monsters then where does that leaveher? They said no one outside could ever love her and what if they’re right?What if she’s damaged?

 All of this is likelyto feed into thoughts about self harm and suicide, though whether she’d act onthose thoughts or not is a different matter.

 It’s a prettyfundamental re-write, and as always you are under no obligation to make thechanges I suggest. It is your story.

 But I think changingher childhood in this way would make the story more realistic, both in terms ofher assassin-based skills and the behaviour you describe in her at 18. I thinkit would also make the story a lotmore creepy and give it a bigger emotional impact.

 I hope that helps,should you chose to keep the characters childhood as is I’m working on asensory deprivation Masterpost you’ll probably find that helpful.

 And good luck with yourstory. :)

Disclaimer

[toosicktoocare]

Seizure Writing Guide!

****This is the seizure anon. I apologize for the wait, I was really excited to share what I knew with you, but then I realized that not only did I write way more than I expected, but I also added comments based on that story you wrote that are denoted with an asterisk at the beginning and end of each comment. I figured you could probably take them out before you actually post it because the notes are explicitly to you. If there’s any way to keep my screen name from posting with the submission that would be awesome because I’m not ready to be “outed” in the community just yet, but if it’s too difficult that’s okay (I’m only 16 and a senior in high school).

So the entire reason why I know anything about what a seizure feels like is because I have grand mal and juvenile absence epilepsy. I had my first grand mal seizure when I was 11, although my neurologist suspected that I had been having absence seizures since age 8. As I went along with my treatment, things started going awry and I developed narcolepsy with cataplexy and a slew of other problems.

Even though I’ll eventually grow out of the epilepsy, I will struggle with severe narcolepsy for the rest of my life. It has robbed me of all control over my sleep wake cycle and made my life touch and go ever since. Lately, I’ve been experiencing a flare-up, something that makes my condition much worse. They occur when I’m stressed or sick, mainly because my narcolepsy is auto immune (which is why, in my opinion, it would make good fic material, but that doesn’t concern this rn). I’ve been battling fatigue all week, and I’m sorry submitting it just slipped my mind. If you want to know more about it, talking about it helps and I can take questions. (After all, you know who I am now.)

So, once again, sorry for the wait. Guide begins below the hash mark, don’t forget to take out the asterisk paragraphs before you post. ****

This is a guide to writing seizures! If you have any knowledge/experience to add, or perhaps if I misrepresented something feel free to add your thoughts as this is for the community as a whole to use!

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General Information

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A seizure is an excess firing of the neurons in the brain. This misfiring can be generalized (affecting both sides of the brain) or focal (affects one side of the brain, a specific area of the brain, etc). Of the focal onset seizures, there are two sub categories, simple partial (person is fully/mostly aware) and complex partial (some changes in levels of consciousness).

Generalized onset seizures normally produce the more obvious/well known symptoms of a seizure, whereas focal onset seizures can have some pretty weird symptoms.

The categories and seizure types that fit into them are as follows:

Generalized- - Convulsive (myoclonic, clonic, tonic, tonic-clonic, atonic) - Non-convulsive (absence-typical/atypical) - Unclassified

Focal- Simple Partial (4 categories) - w/motor symptoms * convulsive/jerking motions, unusual head or eye movements, numbness, tingling, a crawling feeling on your skin, etc.

- w/sensory symptoms * feeling weird pressure or warmth, seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting weird things

- w/autonomic symptoms (autonomic = things that the body regulates automatically, like temperature) * usually things like sweating, stomach churning, nausea, unexplained sense of fear, etc.

- w/psychic symptoms * warped time perception, dysmnesic (deja-vu sense), strong feelings of fear, illusion, hallucinations, difficulty or discomfort swallowing

Complex Partial- - simple partial onset then impaired consciousness - impaired consciousness at onset simple partial evolving into second generalized

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Types of Seizures

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Grand Mal (Tonic-Clonic) Seizures

This is the main type, normally consisting of 4 stages; aura, tonic, clonic, and aftermath. Common triggers include the presence of epilepsy, flashing lights, fever, and head trauma. The victim needs to be monitored during each of the four stages to ensure safety. It is also important to note that any grand mal seizure lasting more than 5 minutes can result in permanent brain damage.

From the victim’s perspective, they may/may not know what is going on depending on whether or not they’ve had a seizure before. Many epileptics are able to tell when they are about to have a seizure based on how their aura phase presents itself. The most common forms are seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting/feeling things that aren’t there. For example, smelling something burning, a metallic taste in the mouth, or possibly even strong feelings of deja vu/turning of he stomach. For non-epileptics and people having their first seizure, it may present as just a feeling of uneasiness and slight drowsiness. It depends on what area(s) of the brain is/are affected.

After the aura, the tonic phase hits and the victim loses consciousness as the body stiffens, lasting 10-25 seconds for the average person. Then the clonic phase hits and the body convulses for an average of 30-50 seconds. The clonic phase is probably the most dangerous part of the seizure because of the possibility of injury. The most important thing to remember is that you have to get the person in a position where they cannot his their head on anything, and you should NEVER try to restrain them while they’re convulsing. It can cause a lot more damage if you try and restrain them than if you just let it take its course.

The aftermath can consist of anything from nausea to a fog-like confusion, and the victim should never be left alone until the stage is completed and the person has regained consciousness and functions normally. It is not uncommon for the victim to forget their name, nor is it for the victim to forget where they are.

Morning of my first seizure I felt abnormally drowsy and I had a mild headache, but I waved it off as the result of staying up late too many nights in a row. So I went to school anyway and made it two hours into my day when suddenly I began to feel extremely heavy, like a lead blanket had been placed over me. I put my head down on my desk, but I kind of knew that I wasn’t falling asleep; it was a different feel. I woke up in the hospital, thoroughly confused, disoriented, and slightly weak. I had woken up in the ambulance, but apparently I couldn’t remember my own name. It took me about 2 days to really recover, but only about a half an hour to an hour to become mostly aware.

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Petit Mal (Absence) Seizures

This is about as close to unconsciousness without actually being unconscious. Can be caused by flashing lights and hyperventilation, but they are normally unprovoked.

Characterized by a blank stare, they are well described by the phrase “time traveling” because you have no clue what goes on during them. It’s like one minute you’re there and then a second passes and you realize a minute passed and you can’t remember what you were doing before. It’s not painful, just really annoying and confusing. They last 30 seconds on average, but can last longer.

Given the elusive nature of absence seizures, it’s pretty unlikely that a quick trip to Web MD would be able to diagnose this. Petit mal seizures are extremely hard to diagnose, especially without an EEG (stands for electroencephalogram, which is a machine that measures brain waves through electrodes applied to the patient’s head). They usually cannot occur in rapid succession, but having multiple absence seizures in a day is possible.

****That is precisely why I liked your story so much! Yes, the “cloud” would be more of an aura phase because you usually can’t tell when they’re going to happen, but as the seizure are a result of possible brain damage it totally works. It was an inventive way to approach it, and I liked the idea. It just makes sense for him because he can’t control how often/intense the ‘glitching’ is.****

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Other, More Obscure Types of Seizures

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Tonic Seizures

Seizure where the body goes rigid. Usually happens during sleep, but can occur when awake. Generally lasts for 20 seconds or less, minimal changes in consciousness. Can happen to any age group.

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Clonic Seizures

Seizure where the body convulses in specific areas or full body. Usually only found in newborns/infants.

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Atonic Seizures

Nicknamed “drop seizures”, it’s a sudden loss of muscle tone either in certain areas of the body or throughout the whole body. Normally lasts less than 15 seconds and person is conscious.

To the person experiencing the episode, it’s terrifying when to have the first one because there you are, going about your daily life and then BOOM you’re on the floor and can’t move. You want to move, but even if you will yourself to move with every fiber of your being, you can’t. Then, when you can move, you may realize you broke something on the way down, or maybe you lost consciousness because you hit the corner of a table on the way down. They are very dangerous, and many people (especially children) who experience uncontrolled atonic seizures are recommended to wear helmets to reduce the risk of injury during a sudden attack.

****I haven’t had an atonic seizure before, but I have had something very, very similar called a cataplexy attack. They SUCK. I developed severe narcolepsy w/cataplexy as a result of having abnormal neural activity (epilepsy), and my first cataplexy attack was TERRIFYING. I was standing up and laughing at something, next thing I know I’m on the ground in excruciating pain because I lost control of my muscles, landed wrong, and broke my tailbone. I was conscious the whole time but I couldn’t move for a good 20 seconds, was in extreme pain, and actually thought I broke my spine (I was 13). I wouldn’t be surprised is something like this happened during an atomic seizure. The important thing to note is that cataplexy attacks are triggered by emotions, whereas atonic seizures cannot be triggered by anything.****

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Myoclonic Seizures

These are seizures that are shown through rapid jerking of the extremities. It’s like severe flinching, or like when a chill runs down your back, and it’s completely involuntary. They can occur at any stage in life.

****I can see the most potential in this for writing purposes because when I had them, I would think 'ey I’m glitching’ and I can see Jeremy and Michael freaking out over something like this. For me it usually didn’t feel like anything, but when it happened with my eyelids it was really weird (my eyelids would twitch and it Mede it hard to pay attention and sometimes got uncomfortable). It’s like muscle spasms, but without pain.****

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Febrile Seizures

Not going to lie, almost forgot to add this to the list. Wasn’t sure where to put it, so naturally I just tacked it on to the end. So, febrile seizures are seizure that are triggered by fever. It mainly happens with newborns/small children, and it’s pretty much just convulsions.

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Hope you enjoyed, feel free to add things!

[happyendingsong]

alright i got high for the first time last night but it really fucked with my adhd and autism and sent me into this really vicious 2.5hr long meltdown/breakdown/panic attack mess. just wondering if anyone has been through that or has any advice?

uh yeah so i’ve tried smoking blunts like 5 times before but it’s never had any effect on me at all. last night i tried taking weed with a bong for the first time and it did work. i wasn’t really feeling chilled out or anything though, i was mainly getting annoyed at myself for not keeping up with my thoughts, like i wasn’t moving or reacting properly and time seemed to pass really weirdly and i just wasn’t keeping up well enough. i tried like cleaning up some trash to give me something to do and centre myself a bit but everything i did was just making me more anxious and self aware of how weird and not good i was being.i think that was the adhd messing me up.

i asked my friend to come with me to the bathroom and i started breaking down crying and getting hysterical. over the two and a half hours i kept screaming or going totally mute (i’ve never gone selectively mute before? it’s really scary :’0) and i kept talking to myself and saying stuff over and over and i knew i wasn’t making any sense and i kept getting so frustrated and scared when people didn’t understand what i meant. and i kept hitting myself and throwing my arms and head against the wall and i was fidgeting so hard with my necklace when i took it off i’ve a few cuts on my hands now. i was getting really paranoid too and getting really anxious and hysterical if someone said something that contradicted something they said before or whatever. i was having hallucinations and stuff as well which i’ve never experienced before, it was so bad fgjgu

it’s the most ‘sensory overloaded’ i’ve ever been. i couldn’t move form this one spot of the floor cause i didn’t want to upset the balance in my feet, like i couldn’t even think of processing a different pressure or getting new ‘feeling’ information from my feet? god idk but i couldn’t move. like i couldn’t maintain eye contact at all and i would keep focusing on a distant spot in the room to focus on so i wouldn’t have any new visual information to process. like at one point one of my friends was playing with the fidgeter i didn’t want to play with anymore and the colours were really distracting so i asked her to put it away in this specific spot where i couldn’t see it. and she kept putting it in places where i could see it and not understanding even when i was pointing and yelling for her to put it in this one place where i couldn’t see it but knew where it was. i got so fixated on it like i finally grabbed it out of her hands and threw it down while screaming hysterically, like i’ve never heard my voice like that before. and i kept muttering and screaming i was sorry for ages after, i’m still really embarrassed and sorry about that particularly. so yeah that’d al be autism shit i’m assuming hfjkh

anyway yeah it was really scary and awful but i had some good friends who helped me through it thankfully. this morning it feels like the weed is totally out of my system but i’m still really hypersensitive and i keep breaking down crying over tiny things. i still feel really anxious and scared idk. i had also had two drinks but i was barely tipsy honestly. i’ve also just started taking adderall like two days ago so that could’ve had a negative effect too? but i also haven’t really felt any effect from the adderall yet so far dgmhgf i’m usually not that susceptible to medication idk hopefully we’ll figure out a dosage soon,, but that’s all a sidenote lmao.

so yeah i’ve tried googling like ‘autism adhd weed bad trip’ but i can’t find anyone else describing an experience like this. yeah i’d just like 2 ask if anyone here has heard of something like that happening? and if you’ve any advice for now? :’U

god sorry but ye thanks for reading anyway!!

[afoolforatook]

Extended tag/trigger warning description for Love Is Being Scared and Loving Anyway Chapter 1, all versions

The first chapter of my big fic Love Is Being Scared and Loving Anyway (Or Loving Anyway) is finally up on AO3. It includes three versions of the same story, one an omniscient point of view, and one from both Clover and Qrow’s own povs. 

Here is an explanation of how this fic is formatted and what the versions are.

Or you can just go straight to the fic. 

Clover’s pov is chapter 1

Omniscient (Eye to Eye) is chapter 2

Qrow’s pov is chapter 3

This is a pretty emotionally heavy fic, and one of the reasons I did the multiple versions was so that there could be options for anyone worried about triggers. Each version on AO3 has a short description of the trigger warnings relevant to that version, but I wanted to go into a bit more detail for anyone who wanted it, and didn’t want to put a wall of text in the chapter notes each time. So this is all the trigger notes for each version, as well as a more complete list of general tags for the chapter. 

As always, if you feel I’ve missed something, or that there is a better tag for something I have covered, please let me know. :)

Ch 1 - Generals tags

Characters - Qrow Branwen, Clover Ebi, Marrow Amin, Elm Erdene , Vine Zeki, Harriet Bree, Ruby Rose, Yang Xiao Long, Summer Rose, Tai Xiao Long (mention), Raven Branwen (mention), Ozpin (mention), James Ironwood (mention), Blake Belladonna (mention), Adam Taurus (mention), Tyrian Callows (mention)

Relationships - Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi, Past Qrow Branwen/Summer Rose, Poly STR- STQ possible but not outright (honestly Idk in this universe if I want it or not…)

(Hey! So I had no idea that the distinction between character/character and character & character was / = Romantic/sexual relationship, & = platonic/familial relationship! So utilizing that now!)

Qrow Branwen & Ruby Rose, Qrow Branwen & Yang Xiao Long, Ruby Rose & Yang Xiao Long, Qrow Branwen & Tai Xiao Long, Qrow Branwen is a father of 8 (9, with Penny), Yang Xiao Long & Tai Xiao Long, STRQ co-parenting, The Rose-Xiao Long-Branwen family 

Content - Hurt/comfort, Vent/therapy fic, Fair Game, Hummingbird

Broad warnings - Panic attacks, PTSD, Flashbacks, Past character death, Ch 12 mention, Ch 12 description, Clover death mention, Ch 12 fix it, Ch 12 was Qrow’s nightmare, Depression, Anxiety, Panic disorder, Insecurity, Grief, Loss of partner, Past alcoholism mention, Alcoholism recovery, Dissociating, Trauma, Nightmares

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Individual versions (I’m only going to expand on the ones that are a bit loose or less straight forward, so things like Racing thoughts, is pretty self contained so explaining would just be spoilers.)

Clover- 

Blood mention - Pretty minimal in this version.

Claustrophobia - Not necessarily technically claustrophobia, but some descriptions that I thought could be triggering.

Difficulty breathing - Due to anxiety, or perceived trouble breathing.

Dissociation - Two reasons, could apply to Qrow for the same reason as above. And for Clover, for using intentional dissociation as a coping mechanism.

Hallucinations/Altered perception of reality/Flashbacks/ PTSD  - All of these really are for the same thing but I wanted to be overly cautious. None of them fit the instance perfectly, but it is generally Qrow misinterpreting things in his panicked state. Seeing, hearing things not as in actual hallucinations but brain still putting everything in the context of his panic/not being fully aware.

Hypercritical - Overly high expectations of self, perfectionism.

Nausea - More just a description of  feeling off.

Paranoia - Really more anxiety related over worrying, apprehension, but again, thought could fall under this umbrella.

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)/Hyper-awareness - Just general over sensitivity, awareness, inability to process during panicked state.

Trichotillomania - Again, not technically, but actions that could be reminiscent.

Unconscious self-harm - Felt like this was the best way to put this, but knew some people might not know exactly what I meant. This is regarding Qrow. He isn’t unconscious but rather, during a panic attack he unknowingly hurts himself, and it’s not at all serious.

(I say it this way because this is how I have described similar instances I have had - basically this is “Qrow hurt itself in its confusion” the tag) 

Anxiety, Coping mechanisms, False confidence, Grief, Hyper-awareness, Insecurity, Intrusive thoughts, Loss of partner, Minor injury (Qrow’s), Panic attack, Panic, Racing thoughts, Self-loathing, Summer death mention, Touch sensitivity.

--------------

Omniscient 

Body horror - I think this is a bit of a stretch, but again, overly careful. Mostly for descriptions of feelings/bodily awareness that could be disturbing. One or two places that lean a little more toward bloody/gory (but not much) 

Dermatillomania - Same as claustrophobia/trichotillomania.

Difficulty speaking/nonverbal episode - Similar to phobias, not quite there but Qrow having a very hard time making himself speak.

Feeling like dying - Description of what Qrow is feeling as he thinks he’s dying (panic).

Alcoholism mention (very minor), Altered perception of reality (see above), Anxiety, Blood mention, Ch 12 That scene mention, Claustrophobia (see above), Clover death description (minor), Clover death mention, Difficulty breathing (see above), Flashbacks (see above), Grief, Hallucinations (see above), Hyper-awareness (see above), Intrusive thoughts, Loss of partner, Minor injury (Qrow’s), Nightmare/Night terror, PTSD (see above), Pain description, Panic attack, Panic, Racing thoughts, SPD (see above), Summer death mention, Touch sensitivity. Trichotillomania (see above), Unconscious self-harm (see above), Vomit mention.

-------------

Qrow- 

Suicidal thoughts - This one’s a little border, or at least what most people would think of as border, even though it still is a form of suicidal thought. It’s nothing in any way actionable or planning, but wishing/expecting to die during a trauma. 

Altered perception of reality (see above), Blood mention, Body horror (see above, though this version gets the closest to actually fitting the term), CH 12 That scene description, Ch 12 mention, Claustrophobia (see above), Clover death description, Clover death mention, Dermatillomania (see above), Difficulty breathing (see above), Difficulty speaking (see above), Dissociation (see above), Feeling like dying (see above), Flashbacks (see above), Grief, Hallucinations (see above), Hyper-awareness (see above), Intrusive thoughts, Loss of partner, Minor injury (Qrow’s), Nightmare/Night terror, Nonverbal episode (see above), PTSD (see above), Pain description, Panic attack, Paranoia (see above), Racing thoughts, SPD (see above), Self-loathing, Summer death description, Summer death mention, Trichotillomania (see above), Unconscious self-harm (see above), Vomit mention.

[rhinointherain]

5-8-2020

Every coherent though is a chain of smaller thoughts Every (thought) is a combination of (feelings that you sense) Every (feeling that you sense) is an (amount of heat in a neuron) every (amount of heat in a neuron (degrees)) is a total sum of energy every total sum of energy is a neuron firing or not firing every neuron firing or not firing is the signal cells being released from the last neuron or not etc etc

Its all either off or on, one or zero, and the derivatives of them. It goes into the FOURTH dimension, the x axis is length (or time, the units) the y axis is x width (2d space) the z axis is x, height (3d space) and the other axis is derivative of x (4d space)

Every thing is a spectrum of itself underneath the 1

Each (x derivative) is an (x), each (x) is an (intergral/anti-derivative) of (x double intiderivative) and so on

Many peoples third eyes open within their lifetime, but only a fewer amount of people actually have the means tools etc to communicative what they understand effectively with the world and possibly harness it for productivity, which is what makes the difference between one of the greatest humans in history and a weird junkie

Kinda impressed by the fact that even despite having no language like this whatsoever to communicate with junkies can find a way to express these things in a way that other people whove gone through it can somehow recognize it

Or maybe they dont recognize what im recognizing at all, they are just communicating other more sensory aspects of “it” (act of third eye being open) and the people whose third eyes actually opened recognize these aspects

I can do anything now if only i remember what this was/is like. I can succeed in any field because I understand how all of them work in principal. Or at least if i remember what i recognize now well enough and can decipher it with enough focus to find a coherent way to use it

Being smart is the ability to recall them more quickly or the ability to understand their connections with each other better or understand them on a “lower” level ( the integral of x, x being thought). Maybe there is no “third eye opening” but its just that you get down on a level few people ever do. But there is no bottom it is an infinity of x into itself, also known as x derivative of x over x intergral of x

Hang on im starting to think of aspects of this i dont understand. Like what are coderivatives or whatever you call them. I cant understand where they fit into this because i dont remember exactly what they are. And time and space being two different dimensions (x and y) or space (y) being the derivative of time (x) oh wait that is exactly what im trying to say, i feel like it could be easier if writing by hand bc i could draw actual derivative symbols instead of counting on words u can type to express what im trying to say

(Wrote this last but put it here bc of organization) Remember this to help you understand: it isnt a chain bc its not just a line its in multiple dimensions. I.E. space. But it is because neurons fire in a chain I.E. time. We can only measure one direction in time but three in space.

Ok this is gonna make me sound even crazier as if I wasnt sounding crazy already. But time travel is not “movement” (one point to another) in the fourth x dimension aka 4th derivative of x (which would be to us like a wormhole), it’s movement in derivative of y? I think y, maybe i have this wrong. Neurons are oriented in space time. The amount of energy they have in them, their location in space (x,y,z coordinates), their location in time (along the x dimension) are all ways to describe the “point” they occupy in all dimensions. (Is the space time continuum represented by the x times xyz space section of all dimensions?)

Time travel is not just derivative of x, which is moving forward aka to the future, but integral of x which is moving “backward” in time aka the past

So not only can you move “outside” i e 4th derivative of x aka the fourth dimension of space (i didnt finish this thought. earlier and am trying to remember deeply enough what it said. It looked like it was a summary of the main idea that not only “” , but also you can move y derivates .” So you actually have an infinite number of dimensions being the derivative of one another in an infinite number of directions)

When they said everythings a fractal that was real

Things go in every direction all at once. And all those things go in every direction of their direction, which is infinitely more times greater than the first “every direction all at once” (which was infinity). Do you understand?

Good god. How did they figure this out. Like when you see media depictions of being high like tool album covers and stuff they have all that fractal stuff and when a sci fi movie wants to convey something deep the zoom in on the molecules until it looks like the universe zoomed out. They understand at least some aspect of this idea.

If i actually wanted my realization to be a groundbreaking thing i would probably need to spend a lot of years trying to convince people i wasnt crazy and only if i eventually effectively communicate my ideas across and spend a lot of time and energy to would it actually later seem like i were a tragic genius rather than a crazy person. also id need to try to hold on how i felt like when i was high for so long it would have a chance of disrupting my mental health/ability to function in society (same thing obvs) and driving me toward like hard drugs and that would not be good

Its so hard to explain the fourth dimension like i really dont think i could try to draw a representation of it like some people do (those cube things, i cant remember what theyre called), my conception of it is a lot more mathematical and verbal. But i still am pretty certain I understand it whether un-high me believes me or not

When youre trying to think about this stuff and you look away at your environment and think about memories and do other complex things that require much deeper chains of neurological communications in order to process them, it becomes a lot harder to focus in on these ideas because the complex things require a much higher/broader/vaguer level of though (higher broader vaguer being words we can use to try to understand what it means to be on a “higher level” as in OUTSIDE OF, DERIVATIVE OF X, IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION etc, just as like (above) and (below) describe location along the z axis if you think of the xy plane aka z equals zero as the “ground” and above means positive z and below means negative z.)

Its going to be harder than i thought to communicate this when sober lol but its still nice i was able to experience it lol

Other things to mention 1. Up until this point (but not after), some pieces of text are out of order than they were written, usually the paragraphs were all written together though not always 2. I wasn’t hallucinating per se but I understand how they work now bc some of the things in the corners of my vision, where my eyes are giving less attention to their light receptors, I’m seeing things off from how they actually are: I turn toward them and perceive them normally but when I turn away and theyre in the corner of my vision i see the distortion again. Its not like scary hallucinations or anything like for example I perceived a giant black slab like in space odyssey in place of the dark doorway, or a wall where there wasnt one. Its because my brain was focusing/thinking in different ways than its used to and so its less sensitive to the type of information it usually takes in from its environment and its interpretations of it are less precise and thus not entirely “correct”. Its a really interesting way of thinking about what it is that you actually notice and perceive. Like the experiment where they switch out the person asking for directions and the majority of people dont actually notice its a difference person

Yeah ok i cant really write much more bc im significantly less high rn, I could sit here the whole rest of the time and try to make sure I understand all this well enough each time I get less high but I really don’t feel like doing that its like, drifting farther and farther away and taking more effort to really grasp it with each drift towards sobriety and while thinking about how I might not understand all this stuff soon I’m tired lol and I appreciate the experience. Anyway yeah

More things I was thinking in the shower: Everything is a direction? And so everything is a dimension? Not just in space or time, thats only one section of it which can be described by a “shape” with three dimensions in the space orientation and one in the time orientation. All categories are their own dimension. In any given moment you are at an intersection of a certain (point) on [the shape representing the space time continuum] and all the other infinities

Question. Does the idea of god fit into all of this. “Who is doing the moving”—that would be god? “What is “moving””, etc. ? If “everything” is all infinities of infinities and this goes on infinitely, there is no possible way to be “outside” that infinity. Therefore you cant possibly “move” it all bc movement requires a force, and that force cant come from “outside” of it so therefore it all “moves” itself? How accurate is the term “movement” to describe what i am referring to? Which is our existence. Aka where the space time continuum is oriented within the “everything”. And by extent, where we ourselves are oriented within the space time continuum. I feel like i could represent this well with a 3d image. We are each our own space time continuum? With all this being understood i believe there is no possible way for us as humans to answer the question of whether there is a god, or what god is. I could be wrong about this but I dont think I personally would be able to. Same with the question of free will. The two are definitely interrelated. I feel like the ideas ive been saying can provide a different framework for talking about questions like this about god and free will and stuff, but the new framework would have to be engaged with/understood more fully in order to get any answers significantly more substantial than what we as humans have already.

“Third eye opening” is what i refer to this experience as but thats just an expression. The eye opening metaphor doesnt hold up super well when i actually think about what i mean by it. What i mean is the moment that you started to understand existence {in a certain way}, more “deeply”/“outside of just perceiving the space time continuum. But i dont think it actually necessarily refers to a specific threshold thats being passed, i just feel like ive reached a level today that is noteworthy because of how much i am able to understand. {In a certain way} is purposefully vague because again im not really sure if there is a threshold for what that certain way actually is, or how you might determine it. Its more that i reached a significant level of understanding existence today. But when people talk about the “third eye being open”, and they actually mean it, this is definitely in the realm of what they mean. Out of all the people in the world who make claims about having their “third eye open”, probably not very many of them mean something similar as i do when I talk about my experience of the third eye being open.

I was thinking about some other stuff as i was lying in bed i didnt write it down unfortunately as i was thinking it but i think it was pretty much repetitions of earlier ideas but elaborated in slightly different ways. overall the final thought was that in sum here are was that i not only can finally conceive of the idea of the fourth (spatial) dimension properly, but i also finally understand that the spatial dimensions are only one tiny “branch” of the many infinities of dimensions that branch into infinitely more infinities of dimensions. I understand now what is meant by “space time continuum” in relation to “everything else”. Oh one other thought i do remember having is that human “religion” (we talked in one my classes how difficult that word is to define) has very little to do with the actual god questions, i.e. what god is and what movement is and how god “works”, but not absolutely nothing to do with them. It’s our (humans’) very very very imprecise way of trying to address these questions.

And one other final thing. My first instinct was to spend hours thinking about how to best and most precisely communicate my understanding so that other people (and sober me) can understand it. I don’t understand why thats what I immediately jumped to doing and still feel the urge to do, when I could much more easily have decided that I was content with just understanding it myself and spending the rest of life knowing that I now have this special knowledge. I always thought i saw knowledge for the sake of knowledge as the ultimate pursuit but I guess I also have the drive to apply it somehow. I wonder if this is true for everyone on some level or not. Oh yes I also had been thinking about how difficult human language is to express what I’m trying to say because its not really equipped for it. like i just want to put quotations around every single word because words are just approximations for the ideas they are trying to express even when talking about ideas that our language is actually designed to describe, not even to mention trying to talk about stuff that it isnt. math concepts (even the few that I actually know anything about) are super super helpful to me in trying to think about and communicate these ideas and now I completely understand what people mean when they say that math is our best bet for being able to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligent life seeing as we have no way of knowing how other beings might perceive information. Wait a minute. Whos even to say that even if our definition of “life” didnt ever evolve anywhere else in the universe, there couldn’t be something else that wasn’t “alive” by this strict definition but not exactly “not alive” either. Like it didnt have “cells” exactly like earth organisms but it was somehow distinct from “not alive” things just like earth organisms are. Like the same way that viruses are neither alive nor not alive.

That article i had to read in cog sci about the “levels of understanding” (i.e. sociology is an abstraction of psychology is an abstraction of biology is an abstraction of chemistry is an abstraction of physics) is something that can fit into this understanding and probably led me to it too, seeing as I have thought about it a good deal since when i read it a few years ago. “...Is an abstraction of” is kinda like saying “is the derivate of”. Or is it like saying “is the integral of”, sorry I’m getting really tired.

Is “How” the integral of “what”, or the derivative?

Ok NOW i am going to actually sleep and instead of trying to think about this more i am going to be content with the fact that i now have all this knowledge.

Your neurons take a snapshot

Even if i am right about all this there isnt actually a point in conveying it and making it understood by other people. Even if it is an extraordinary feat to be able to understand all this it wont be seen as extraordinary (whatever that means) unless enough other people can understand it well enough to understand its significance, or someone who does understand it can make it relevant in some way to the rest of humanity and the functioning of society. I can wake up tomorrow and choose to say “lol i was so high and just rambling nonsense” and choose never to engage with these ideas again and go about my life like normal, or i can take on the burden of choosing to believe they are real, and then deciding whether i need to make them and their significance known (I dont even know if i know what their “significance” is, or if they have one). I dont know which one would overall be the better thing to do.