#fight flight

[moonlit-positivity]

What Does PTSD Hypervigilance Look Like?

Tw: activating language, body triggers, nervous system dysregulation, & fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses listed below. Please read with care.

Constantly checking outside by slightly peeking out the hole in the blinds so no one knows youre looking out the window

Listening & memorizing footstep patterns of those who live with you

Memorizing schedules & when people leave the house to know when you can move through the house alone

Tip-toeing or walking in a certain way to make your steps have less noise

Holding your breath or controlling your breathing to make as little noise as possible

Being extra aware of how everything is laid out on the table, where every single item in the pantry, fridge, etc is so when you take something you can put it back undisturbed

Eating food or taking things out of the fridge in a way that makes it seem like you never took anything out

Being constantly aware of how loud your own body is (ie chewing too loud, breathing too loud, walking too loud, not laughing, not crying, mastering the art of being silent)

Making sure the TV was on the same channel/app it was before you turned it on (this one's for us older gens, before we had these smart TVs there was a time when analog TV left a trail of previously watched channels so you'd have to wipe the remote clean before you got caught)

Erasing texts

Having people stored in your phone under false contacts bc your parents/abusers/etc would search your phone

Not able to keep personal photos on your phone for same reasons

Not being able to keep things in your room bc your parents would search your room

Not being able to keep things hidden in your backpack either for the same reasons

Keeping everything hidden at school or asking someone else's to keep them

Not able to keep a diary or journal bc someone would read it even if you asked them not to they wouldn't care and read it anyway

Not having a door on your room or having the door removed

Being told you have no privacy because you "belong" to them

Erasing your tracks with everything you do

Listening for car noises, car door slams, and memorizing the way the engine sounds so you can instantly hear when people get home

Memorizing car sounds or always looking out the window to see if someone has pulled up

Checking every house window in your field of view every second of the day

Constantly watching the front door even though it's closed and locked

Constantly watching your room door

Not being comfortable with things out of your line of sight

Constantly having the TV silent or low volume so you don't make too much noise & also so you can hear better

Memorizing daily life schedules, like when your housemates eat, use the bathroom, get up & walk around so you can be constantly aware of everyone at all times

Not making direct eye contact out of fear that it will spark a conflict

Being constantly aware of tone of voice, inflection, etc in case they're going to verbally abuse or degrade you or humiliate you

Being hyper aware of someone entering your personal space

Flinching

Flinching when someone walks by you

Flinching when someone reaches over you

Flinching when anticipating to get hit

Freezing & paralysis anytime something goes off pattern

Never being able to tell tone over text/ always needing to clarify if someone is mad at you

Not being able to physically get up and walk around the house unless you know you're in a safe position to do so

Not being able to physically get up to use the bathroom unless you're in a position to know it's safe to move around the house undetected

Waiting until everyone goes to bed in order to move around the house or relax

Holding your breath & tensing your muscles

Dissociation & brain fogs

Agoraphobia

Fear of being perceived

Fear of being abandoned

Fear of being seen

Fear of being judged

Fear of being hit

Fear of being alive

Fear of failing

Fear of being alone

Fear of not being good enough

Fawning

Grovelling

People pleasing

Staying silent because it will be less likely to cause a conflict

Hiding your emotions & masking

[strangetownbellagoth]

Life with bpd, unhealed trauma is a hell of a drug. Like.. ?? I want to be finally free and I know what to do even but it's so difficult for me to relax and to do my dbt and somatic experiencing exercises. Im in functional freeze and Im just bed rotting, doom scrolling and when Im not in functional freeze Im in fight/flight filled with anger and stress but I can't release it.

[guardian-of-da-gay]

eventual Mama's boy

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

The only thing funnier than the FOB We Didn't Start the Fire cover is libs handwringing over the "Shinzo Abe blown away" line as "tasteless" since a) it's literally just an update of the lyric "JFK blown away" and b) Shinzo Abe getting murked by a Fallout 4 contraption shotgun was one of the funniest and coolest things to happen in the last ten years and he 100% deserved it

[brainrotcharacters]

the man trained by the shimotsuki since childhood, the mind behind the three sword style, the demon pirate hunter, vice captain of the Strawhat Pirates,

easily stopped with a hand on his shoulder by his captain (currently in a silly hungry vibe)

[southsideofchicago]

bro basically said "oh you sweet summer child, we're both very fucked."

[curlytsunamiart]

based on mcpig's joke about what gustavo's catchphrase would be

[royalarchivist]

Slimecicle: Who's Phone Guy?

Ranboo: Phone Guy? I – hold on, give me a second.

Slimecicle: [Laughs] "Okay, checking the checking the database."

Ranboo: Oh, a lot of yaoi here in the images tab, that's crazy.

Slimecicle: What is– what is yaoi? Is that like is that like "yeowch"?

Ranboo: Oh, yaoi? No no no, yaoi– no, yaoi is not–

Slimecicle: When you stub your toe?

Ranboo: –a combination of "yeowch" and "owie."

Slimecicle: Yeowie!

Ranboo: No, it's not– [Laughs] It's not that, actually.

Slimecicle: That's what that is, right?

Ranboo: Yeah, it's just– it's usually just fan art of two guys kissing. That's usually what it is.

Slimecicle: Ok, wait– is phone guy- is Phone Guy kissing?

Ranboo: Phone Guy? Probably? I mean, look at– I want you to take a look at this. Hold on, lemme–

Slimecicle: Ok, so send me Phone Guy yaoi.

Ranboo: Yeah. Here, I got you, lemme– so there's some. Hold on, let me send you some more.

Slimecicle: What the fu–

[wellfine]

[funkily]

these 10 seconds have changed my brain chemisty like nothing else

transcript:

Pix: Scott!

Scott: (distant) So I think I have - Oh! Um... hello?

Pix: Hey.

Scott: Hellooo? Hi!

Pix: Come out here. We need to talk.

Scott: Talk about what?

Pix: I think -

Scott: How are you? You look dashing today.

Pix: Uh, that's... neither here nor there.

[offsorai]

The Black Sun

[moonlit-positivity]

Lets talk about emotional regulation on a deeper level

Here is a wildly controversial truth: your emotional responses actually make a lot of sense considering what you've been through in your life.

The way you react to stress- the way you shut down, isolate, deny, avoid, daydream, escape, use addictions, and/or self harm? Or the way you lash out, get revenge, get violent, manipulate & gaslight, and project your emotions onto others? Or the way you fawn, people please, shut down emotionally, prioritize others before yourself, and freeze? These responses are born out of pure survival. Every last one of them. At some point these responses were there so you could survive an environment that was trying to kill you. If you don't think that's accurate, then consider that your body & mind felt threatened enough to give you these responses in the first place. It actually makes a lot of sense that your reactions to high stress is to revert to what saved you as a child.

Here's the thing though, what saved you as a child is no longer serving you the same purpose now as an adult.

If you're entering new relationships and friendships as an adult under the same mindset of, "these people are trying to kill me," then here's what's going to happen: your partner, friend, etc is going to inevitably make a mistake that is going to trigger you into that primal, neolithic state of survival. And you are going to unconsciously react in the same ways that saved you as a child. But the difference is that, the person next to you isn't actually trying to kill you. They're just making an honest to goodness mistake and now you're going at them like they're evil incarnate. Or, you're withdrawing and hurting yourself and probably gonna ghost them now because you're too scared to communicate what it is that's bothering you. Or, you're going to pretend like you didn't see it and shut yourself down emotionally and just hope that it works out, until one day you're gonna snap and all that pent up anger is gonna explode out of you like Mount Vesuvius on firey steroids.

This is why it's so important to learn how to do the following things:

1. Spend some time reaffirming that what you went through as a kid was absolutely not normal, under any circumstances. That shit was batshit insane and it shouldn't have happened to you. You really need to dig deep and reaffirm that no, most of the world isn't actively trying to kill you, attack you, or make you suffer. What you went through was truly an isolated incident of pure fuckery. And yeah, it sucks but people will inevitably hurt you again. Learning about boundaries can help with this. But the sooner you realize that most people around you are genuinely not trying to hurt you, the better your life is going to get. Trauma therapy can be a great place to unload these kinds of things.

2. Spend some time processing how your parents'/ abuser's reactions, overreactions, abuse, neglect, gaslighting & projections, etc made you feel. This is important. And yeah it hurts like fuck, but this is important because once you actually allow yourself to feel & process the pain and suffering they did to you, your body starts to shift out of survival and you start to understand exactly how your own emotional responses feel for you & others around you. It gives you a deeper sense of understanding. And yes, this works for low empathy disorders like NPD too. If you were abused as a kid then it literally doesn't matter what your diagnosis is. The fact that your childhood robbed you of safe & secure connection, attunement, regulation, trust, and autonomy, is actually 100% the entire reason why your symptoms exist. And it sucks that the current mental health field does not acknowledge this. You can't pour from a cup that has been empty since the day you were born. You need to turn that attention inward and start unpacking all that shit.

3. Find ways to foster empathy and compassion for yourself with gentle parenting. Your childhood guidance is missing. You need to go back and essentially re-raise yourself. This is the hard & laborious work of inner child healing, emotional regulation, DBT, attachment theory healing, learning how to communicate, etc. imo this is what therapy should be about tbh.

4. Find safe ways to be vulnerable in peace. Restoring your own sense of control over who you allow into your life and what you allow them to do to you, is one great way to gain the safety you need to do this kind of work with. But the one hard inevitable truth of this world is that you are actually going to have to learn how to be vulnerable. You are going to have to learn how to foster grace and compassion for yourself enough to be seen on a deeper level. Again, I'd suggest trauma therapy.

I'd say this is one helluva controversial take, because most spaces will tell you things like, "your reactions are the problem." And well, yeah okay fine. You got a point. But how do you actually do the work in a healthy and safer manner that gets you actually motivated to self inspect and change your ways? This is how you do that. Recognize what you went through was pure survival, so you can foster a better sense of compassion for yourself. Finding a good trauma therapist can help with this. By doing this your body automatically gains the regulation needed to process the fact that yeah, okay, there actually is a different way to do things. Everything else comes naturally over time. And I do mean time. This isn't something you can do once and then call it good. You're gonna be doing this for the rest of your life.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Hope this helps

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

[creekfiend]

Something I've learned recently is that there's multiple ways you can respond when you identify hypocrisy in yourself.... like, supposing you notice that you have treated someone in a way that is not in line with your values. You COULD beat yourself up about it and be like "ugh you hypocrite, you SAY you have x values but then you treated these people in this other way"

Or, and I think this qualifies much better as "taking responsibility for your actions": you can go "huh. I definitely do have x values and believe people should be treated in these ways... and much of the time I am able to behave in ways that are in line with those values... and yet under these specific circumstances I was for some reason not able to do that. Let's look at those situations and people and try to find some patterns there so I can identify what types of scenarios make it hard for me to behave according to my values"

And then when you identify situations like that in the future, you can try and give yourself the time and space to really process stuff and try to remind yourself "this is a situation where behaving according to my values has been difficult in the past" which will help you be more intentional and careful in how you proceed.

Anyway. That's hard but it's a big relief to do because it really feels like being armed with magical knowledge lolol

[tatck]

Spooky FIGHT OR FLIGHT

[coffee-stainedwriting]

Fight, flight, freeze, fawn

When someone has adrenaline, they react with one pf the following four responses. If you want to write realistic characters, consider which they would do and then include it in your writing, even if it's very minor, it makes a big difference.

Fight; In an attempt to overcome the complication, the person fights back. Whether this is physical, emotional or spoken, the aim is to best the problem and be on top.

Flight; In an attempt to overcome the complication, the person flees. This can be physical (running from a predator) or mental (stop thinking about the problem). This reaction aims to put distance between the person and the problem.

Freeze; In an attempt to overcome the complication, the person stops their previous action. This can be physical, to avoid being seen or mental, like their thoughts or words stop. The freeze reaction aims to conceal themselves from the complication.

Fawn; In an attempt to overcome the complication, the person attempts to appease. The fawn reaction aims to avoid conflict, physically (talking to complication) or mentally (passing things off)

Keep in mind; sometimes their reactions aren't successful.

Thanks for reading, have a good day!

[halcyon-autumn]

Happy "Kristen Applebees gets kicked out of school" Eve to all who celebrate

Cassandra willing, we will all be celebrating "Bobby Dawn gets murdered" Eve this time next week