#like when i told him that psychotherapy is a major part in my life he took a moment to think

[liberty-spiked]

They always fucking expect me to share private stuff about my life man. Fuck people wanting to protect their privacy, right? Sure, I could tell them about my trauma but then everyone in the room feels bad. And god forbid i say something slightly political. Thats a state sponsored course! I should be glad to be a participant!

They dont know how much i hold myself back to not stirr up trouble 🙃🙃🙃

[csa-survivor-confessions]

?

i still remember very little of my trauma/CSA, and i often doubt if it even happened at all because i don’t remember who the perpetrator was. i can remember how it FELT, physically and emotionally, but i don’t have much visual memory, mostly just somatic. the doubt is still something i struggle with so much, and even though i’ve been in trauma therapy for years now, and was referred to a DID specialist by multiple clinicians, i still have this fear that i somehow subconsciously made the whole thing up to get attention or to use as an excuse. i’ve done a lot of reading on the false memory myth, but of course my brain tells me that i must be the exception, that the CSA simply could not have happened to me, especially since a don’t remember who the perpetrator was.

a few months ago, my older sister disclosed to me that our older brother was sexually abusive to her when she was a teenager. she said he never touched her, but would try to record her in the shower, and even stole nude pictures of her off her computer and anonymously used them to blackmail her when she was 16. the police traced it back to him, but my parents blamed her because they were angry that she had taken those photos in the first place (we grew up in a very religious fundamentalist household.) that’s why she decided not to press charges.

this brought up so many questions for me about if it’s possible that my brother was my perpetrator— from what i remember, my perpetrator was a man who was much older than me. i always assumed it was an adult but it’s possible it could’ve been a teenager like my brother was at that time (he is 8 years older than me.) the abuse happened when i was the ages 4-7, at night. aside from that, i don’t know much in terms of context and setting. it’s also possible that someone else in our lives abused both me and my brother, and he was acting it out on my sister. i don’t know. i just wish i could remember. i can’t remember very much at all about my life before age 9-10.

my DID specialist told me that some memories are “unexperienced” because the brain can sometimes just completely shut down during a major trauma, which could be why i have more memory of right before certain events and right after, but only somatic memory of what happened in between. she said these full memories may never come back, and while i’m terrified to remember, it also feels maybe even scarier not to, because then i feel like i’ll never be safe— i question everyone in my life, and i feel like i can’t trust anyone. my specialist also told me that not remembering who your perpetrator was often happens when the perpetrator was someone close to you, who you trusted. i just can’t fathom any of it. it makes me feel like i can’t trust anyone at all.

is it still possible to fully heal from CSA if the memories never come back? if i never remember who the perpetrator was? is it possible to ever feel safe, or to trust myself and others? i know you can’t give me a concrete answer on whether or not it’s real, but i’m so scared that i’ll never heal from this.

thank you for all that you do here <3

Hello,

You can absolutely still heal from your trauma!

There are therapeutic methods that don't require talking about the specifics of trauma. Methods that are based heavily on somatic processing, examples include Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor psychotherapy, brain spotting, trauma-informed yoga, trauma-informed massage, and more. These focous on integrating trauma responses that are held in the body. They can work on the body memories and parts of memory you have, you do not need to know the perpetrator. These therapies are known to be really helpful in forming felt safety and reducing hypervigilance.

You can also still do things with communicating with your alters and bringing down dissociative barriers. Understanding what your alters are carrying and letting them express themselves will help quite a bit. You don't have to have memories in totality to learn communication.

Bringing down dissociative barriers will also help with feeling safe in your body. When you work together life becomes more manageable and dissociative experiences can often decrease. Dissociative experiences can contribute to feeling unsafe and breaking health attachments to other people. So rather functional multiplicity or total fusion is what your want to do (and it's fine if you don't know yet) it will make your life better!

it's normal to be afraid of people around us when we don't know what happened exactly in our childhoods it's so hard, but you're not alone.

As you're able to bring down the hyperarousal in your body, I believe that the fear of everyone around you will decrease. Of course, it is true that there might still be worries. but you can build a full life.

I can not tell you if your brother was the one to abuse you or not. But I can tell you that your life can and will get better.

Be Blessed,

-Admin 2

[chaoticlamphoagietaco]

2020?

Well what can I say, it seems like it’s ending with a bang, but there’s still two months left.

Biden is president, and trump has yet to retaliate, I wonder what that’s going to look like.

My boyfriend and I are having sexual issues, or rather I’m seeing issues in our sexual habits.

It feels one-sided, I please him (he cums), he pleases me and I don’t cum. It’s frustrating because I’ve seen him go on hikes, talk to people for hours, if you can be active in this way, why is it difficult to just suck my dick for like 30? I understand if you lock jaw, but over the course of our relationship, sex has been me being patient and him getting off. It’s hard to maintain sexual interest, and maybe that’s why my mind goes in these fantasies. I’m almost at the point where if we have anal, I know where gonna end up jerking off... maybe I’m asking for too much, or maybe I’m just tired of being patient.... I wanna see if he will be open to swinging, or wearing a long dildo for a couple of days to resolve the issue, but I’m not sure how he will respond, or when this conversation will happen. I’m hoping that Sunday will be the day but I’m not sure.

I miss my mother, I feel her trying to reach me but I struggle to connect to her spirit. There’s so much unsaid, that it’s hard to equate the relationship to only a spiritual level. I... don’t know what I would say. Am I angry for the suppression. Of my dance enthusiasm? Am I upset because I never told her I was gay? Am I upset because she’ll never see the fruition of my dreams?

Ri

Speakings of, I don’t know my dreams,p anymore.... or rather they feel like they are transforming. I wanted to be a research analyst after falling out of love with psychotherapy and sociology, but I realized what that actually meant. Research analyst is a broad term, that can encompass a business, health centers/organizations, government, and nonprofit. And essentially these are all the sectors you. And work for other than a school which I do not want to do. Through my conversation. With NASA I found more about becoming a data analyst, and while the salary was enticing I realized that was a computer science that didn’t incorporate sociology or psychology like I had hoped. When I stumbled upon market/marketing research analyst I was hooked. I knew that finance and accounting wasn’t my passion, but marketing itself wasn’t either. Marketing has been largely traditional, and digital marketing is basically a new field. I think this is why I made the decision to transfer my major so hastily, it encompasses everything I was searching for with program evaluation, I can conduct research based on consumer intelligence which incorporatess social psychology, and have the promising effects of impact. Or in other words, my research will be used and considered valuable to the company I’m working for or working with. In program evaluation, sociology and psychology, the effect that your research has is truly perceptional and has a large ambiguity around its impact. You can go 4-10 years without achieving a goal you intended, which is expected and encouraged in some situations. On top of all this, withi program Evaluation and psychology there’s an expectation around the support you give in the exchange. Not only am I conducting research for MBH, but we (the school) are helping the business attract African America. Participants to their establishment, which can be done in so many different ways, it would take. A considerable amount of money, resources, and process and attention needs to be there if you want to achieve an impact. How can this be achieved when the business in itself is not liable for its own pretentiousness? Or it’s own self-processing that I can’t change? Thankfully, with marketing I get the best of both worlds. I can incorporate my social psychology background, while also attending to my creative side in branding, and even furthermore conducting meaningful research that is almost guaranteed to have an impact (since if I don’t, I’m not doing my job well haha) and will be used as vital data for profitability will not only motivate me to take the job, my peers, and the business seriously, but will also compensate me tremendously well, I mean it’s very lie,oh that in 2-3 years time I could be making a 6 figure salary. With this in mind, I feel Clarity around my occupational pursuits, but as for my dreams... that’s another story...

My dance past is struggle to bring up, even typing....,

I was so close, yet everything was taking from me, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

With this, I keep falling in and out of love with dance, I watch a video and I feel inspired to dance again. I’m feeling more drawn to Alonzo Lines ballet, Nunes, and of course my all time favorite Batsheva. But watching hip hop videos make me cry, it reminds me of what I use to be, what I could have become, and how many friends I’ve lost along the way. Dance is brutual, forcing vulnerability and deep connection within a short period of time, I’m not sure how I to come back to it but I’m getting more inspired to. My roommate doesn’t make me feel comfortable eno to explore my creative side, but when me and bf live together, I hope I can feel more comfortable and start recording myself more often, the encouragement he brings is so ephemeral, I’m lucky to have him. But I know that at the least, if I came back to dance, I outdone be more interested in dance film, and being inside of that industry rather than concert dance, sinner the world is kind of moving into a digital world, definitely open to site specific work, given the right amount of viewers and support of course,

For my other dreams that are transforming, I know want to become marketing manager, and possibly a yoga teacher. I’ve gone back and forth with a yogic certificate, but I didn’t feel that I had enough practice, knowledge, or the right people to start with a subject like that. But fuck, I mean soooo many white people do it haha. I’m feeling more motivation for this certificate since I realized that I can make friends this way. I can find like minded people who practice, engage in processing, and are willing to go into platonic physical interactions, since I’m also realizing this is crucial for me in any platonic relationship. If this program started progressing, this could become a business that provides an income, I met awesome people, and I can a lot of ppl along the way. Downsides are of course if the business collapses, but I would gain knowledge in Hinduism which I’ve been wanting but unsure how to engage in.

What’s serendipitous though, is that the the timing of marketing could not be better, a program has a date right after my classes end, I can attend their classes, then continue my spring courses, and work a full time job and on my way to 6 figures. There’s so many resources and side that this transition feels right and meaningful, I’m feeling good about this change, I just hope I won’t want to change again 5 years from now.

Hinduism and Buddhism.... my practices and faith have been wavering, after Naropa, my experience with Buddhism is a bit tainted, maybe I need to go to retreat again and release any energy surrounding my mother, but other factors play a part. The prentiousness, the fake smiles, that school had a lot of problems, but none more so than racism pure and simple. This is why I love Virginia, racism over there is overt and blatant, I know who the racist is and I know where not to go. Here in boulder, everybody will smile at you, and you don’t know who is truly being racist, you have to really read behind the lines and analyze to understand the truth of what somebody is saying, I mean the school burned down on its own so I think my wishes are being granted... I don’t know where this leaves me with Buddhism, Charlotta was amazing, and I want to attend her classes, but something always holds me back and I don’t know what. In regards to Hinduism, my yoga sequence has pretty much been the only stabilizing thing in my life. Through all the obstacles and trauma, maintains these practices have really kept me balanced through whatever comes my way, although I have been slacking I some ways, I’ve also been progressing in chakras, balancing, and following a routine. Maybe in this way, Buddhism is something for me to contemplate, maybe Hinduism is what I want to talk about...there it is, Buddhism is my process and Hinduism is my faith. Shiva will always be my everything, in not sure why on that mountain, or even if I made a connection, but that trip to Japan truly changed me, and I want to follow a Shiva path that is right for me, I just wish I had someone to help guide me, but that might make things harder.

[justarturo]

In defense of Rose Quartz

Recently the Steven Universe Movie was released and a lot of Steven Universe’s fans like me are thrilled with it, the plot, the songs, the villain, the time leap, etc, are all great, I truly enjoyed it very much, however, there was a moment in the movie that really saddened me, the moment when Spinel narrates how she was deceived by Pink Diamond to stand in the Garden alone for 6,000 thousand years. I agree, it was pretty disturbing and unsettling to hear about that, and I agree this was a horrible action for Pink to do, but the thing that saddened me the most was when Steven said: “I can’t believe Pink Diamond did that to you, well actually I can 😒”. You see, I’m not trying to excuse Pink Diamond’s actions towards Spinel as not serious nor damaging, but I was deeply offended to hear Steven trash his mother like that, so I told myself: “Myself, I think it is important for me to express my opinion on Rose Quartz to my fellow fandom members because I do not like that she is considered a Villain nowadays.” So here I am, hope you like and understand my point of view:

First of all, I want to state that when I refer to the character as Pink diamond, I’m talking from the pre series events up until when she faked her shattering, and when I refer to the character as Rose Quartz is from the first time ever she shapeshifted to be a Quartz, I know that there is a period of time where these to personas overlap, but I think it is key to the purpose of my analysis to understand this.

As we have come to learn in the recent seasons of the show, Pink Diamond, although a member of the Great Diamond Authority, was the less powerful one of the four, White is the supreme leader, followed by Blue and Yellow and then, the tiny “weak” Pink. As Blue stated in one episode, Pink suffered for eons the mistreatment of her fellow Diamonds, always being treated as a child, rather than an equal, but not only as a child, but as an unwanted, neglected child. The other Diamonds, never ever ever made an effort to understand her, listen or talk to her, I would even dare to claim that she was just the extra Diamond for them. Sure, they loved her, (or so they say) but that doesn’t mean their love was not abusive or that it was healthy and nurturing towards Pink; as a matter of fact in every flashback she is seen interacting with Blue and Yellow, she is constantly belittled, underestimated or silenced; they claim she is a Diamond and therefore she has a status to preserve, but as Pearl stated, they really didn’t care about it, the status Pink beared as a member of the Diamond Authority only had an impact to the rest of the gemkind as seen in Garnet’s story about Rose’s origin, but at home, she was as good as any other pebble. Both Yellow and Blue were violent to her, Yellow being more agressive and Blue being more condescending and overprotective (Yes, these are also forms of aggresion inside a family). It is never seen how Pink interacted with White, but it is safe to assume that if both Blue and Yellow are scared of her, Pink probably received the worst of White’s mistreatments. All of these arguments can be prooved on the present day when Steven reveals to be a new incarnation of Pink, and how, at first, Yellow and Blue hug him and cherish him up until in Homeworld, they put him back on the White Diamond standards and lock him up when he acts unacceptably (When fused with Connie). Even, when greeting White for the first time, she did not even listened to him, she spoke the same way one of us would talk to our dog when we arrive home. So in order to move on, we must accept one FACT: Pink Diamond was psychologically abused by her fellow diamonds.

Now, we come to learn that eventually Blue and Yellow agree to let Pink start her own colony at the Planet Earth, we even saw in an Stevonnie flashback, how she asked for it for so long, and we saw her pissed af at the end, when she smashed a mirror, a lot of people described this as a tantrum, however i do not agree, can u imagine been underestimated by your family for EONS just wanting to try to be piece of how they are, and what they do, and everytime getting the condescending attitude reminding you how much you are not worth? It must be Hell. Later we learn that Pink discovered that running a colony could be very dull, and even though she was excited to see how it would turn out, she was really bored to perform her new project the way Blue and Yellow would, she would have rather do it the way Pink wanted, thefore she had to come up (with the help of Pearl) with a secret identity, a persona that would allow her to be really her. This is truly and deeply sad. To invent a new you in order to be the real you. You see where I’m getting now? Rose was the real Pink, because Pink was a prisioner of the life choices someone else made for her, if Pink dared to be Pink, she was scolded, locked away, belittled, mistreated, etc. All signs of psychological abuse.

Later Rose discovers the truth about Earth and how, the gem colonies create life not from nowhere, but taking it from everywhere in the planet, and she discovers in the organic life of the planet, specially humans, equals. Beings that are just themselves the way they want and can be, not determined by anyone else. The butterfly flies, the fish swims, the wind blows, the grass grows, people live. Peridot says when facing Jasper, “I’m living here, I’ve been discovering new things about myself all the time (...) the point is, Earth can set you free”, the funny thing is that Peridot is not the first high status gem to discover this, Rose was! She discovered that not even acting fully like a diamond she was being herself, because her true self was not determined by neither of the diamonds, nor her status, but by herself. She discovered the beauty of organic lifeforms lives and decided to let them be, without hurting them, as she wished she would not had been hurt by her family; up to this moment in time, Pink was not planning to leave Home World and stay on Earth, just leave Earth with the rest of the gemkind and allow its survival, but as Pearl narrated, when she mentioned her concerns to her fellow diamonds, she was once again ignored by them. I know some of you will say “Of course! She insisted so much on a colony, and now she doesn’t want it?!” The issue here is, how could she have known what she wanted before if she was always misplaced by her family and the only reason she asked for one was to be an equal part of the Diamond Authority, to be and feel truly one of them.

When Steven, Garnet and Amethyst discover that Rose and Pink were the same gem, Garnet came undone and Sapphire fled the temple engulfed with rage and deception towards Rose. She could not understand how a Diamond could not shut down the colony herself and avoid the war, the gem deaths, the gem corruptions, etc. and how she had to come up with a rebel persona to manage her “let Earth live” goals. However her mistake is to assume that Pink was equal to the other Diamonds, just for being a Diamond. It hurts me to say this as Sapphire is my favorite crystal gem, but as she never truly met Pink, she is not taking Pink’s emotions into account, only Rose’s, those life loving, always nurturing, caring, empathetic, and optimistic Rose feelings, but as we now understand, the Rose face, was fueled by Pink’s sorrow. Isn’t sad that you have to disguise yourself in order for your family to notice you? That is the sorrow that moved Pink to be Rose. But as Pearl, Steven and Sapphire, discover, it was just when Rose saw Garnet, that she understood other gems might have been feeling as trapped as she felt under the Diamond Authority. It was then when she claimed the rebellion not only for the Earth survival but for gems liberation all over the empire.

I know that from this point on, the Crystal Gems consider her selfish, and in some way she may be, but they don’t consider her abuse history and her violent background, a background that left not only Pink, but every memeber of the crystal gems scarred for ever. Yes the war resulted in the extermination of a ton of gems, the cluster experiment, the corruption of the rebels, etc. But as Garnet claimed, Rose couln’t have known, she was fighting for her chance to live and every gem that joined her, even Pearl, did so willingly in order to get that chance as well. It is true, her plans did not happen as she would have wished, but she did her best, considering she had suffered a lot. Her sight of her future was tunnel like, focused on the crystal gems goals, she could not forsee the risks, but that doesn’t mean that if they happened it was her fault,

Now, back to Spinel, Pink abandoned Spinel just before getting her colony, at that time she was a Diamond, and as we already said, an abused one. However she was still a Diamond, and it is logical that she would learn to act as the other Diamonds at some point, it is true, her actions are completely despicable, but if we set her back in an abusive context in which the only way to survive is to be as abusive as the abusers, you can at least understand how she came up with such a terrible solution to her Spinel “problem”. This behavior patterns are repeated by all the Diamonds up until Steven challenges each one fo them at the end of the fifth season, and it is when we learn that both Blue and Yellow have also been mistreated by White. Now stepping out a little of the show and into psychology, it is a known fact that sometimes abused people, whereas they suffered physical, psychological, emotional, etc. violence, have a tendency to become abusers themselves, it is not certain that this will happen, but it is highly probable, and it is not because they became villains themselves, but because each victim’s psyche, changes in order for the person to survives in a world that allowed them to be abused. It is part of a major violence trend in human society, and only through psychotherapy, and effective support system, a re-learning process, and exiting the abusive context, the person is able to face her traumas. (Face is different to Getting over).

So we can se how, Pink, was only a Link in a chain of violence and emotional abuse among all gemkind. It is true that as Rose, she commited so many mistakes in the process, mistakes that affected gems like Bismuth, Lapis Lazulli and Spinel, gems that at any given point became also abusers, but changed back to a more collected way of living, thanks to Steven, who is Pink and Rose’s, new incarnation (full circle). However lets not forget that any action that Steven has taken to improve his world, his galaxy and his life, is in some way an upgrade from Pink’s/Rose’s way. The difference between Rose and Steven lays on the fact that Steven was raised by the Crystal Gems and Greg to be himself, goal that Rose fought to reach not only for herself but for everyone in this very group. The fact that she fought and in some ways managed to reach it, is the reason Steven is able to fight and improve gemkind lives on the present. So lets not forget that, it was hard for Rose, but she had the courage to defy the abusive patterns she lived and learned for eons ans that courage, despite the mistakes commited, deserves to be praised not criticized. Furthermore, it is really unfair how Rose is expected to be perfect and she is despised when the Crystal gems discover she was not, Steven even proved how White is not perfect, why on Earth should Rose be. Steven, Garnet, Pearl and amethyst, and the rest of the team, all have flaws, and THATS OK, THATS GOOD! Why it is not good enough for Rose? She deserves to be as imperfect as the rest.

This show is amazing as it advocates for sexual diversity and mental health awareness, lets just not forget that abuse and violence survival is also one facet of mental health awareness

Now some of my Gifs and images of the show

[thepencilnerd]

- 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐬 3 -

➳ Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4

➳ Pairing: Mark Tuan x Reader

➳ Summary: AU! The members of GOT7 take a year off from being idols and decide to go back to school. Mark is the jerk with a temper, but what happens when he meets a girl with an attitude to match his own?

➳ Genre: AU, fluff, angst, enemies to lovers

➳ Word Count: 2.7k 

➳ Warnings: Swearing

➳ Really Really- WINNER

a/n: Masterlist & links to other parts can be found @ my main URL

Cracking the egg on the side of the bowl, I whisked in the diced carrots, chives, bell peppers, and red onions into the omelet and poured it onto the pan. It was Saturday morning and I was distracting myself from my impending doom by cooking.

“Breakfast on a lazy Saturday?” Claire yawned. Tying her bird’s nest of a bed head into a makeshift bun, she clasped her hands over her heart in an exaggerated manner. “My best friend is truly the best.” 

Laughing at her antics, I flipped the omelet and slid it onto her plate. She pressed her hands together and bowed forcefully before digging in. 

“Slow down,” I chuckled, pouring her a glass of juice. “You’re going to choke on a piece of carrot.” 

“I will die a happy fat bunny,” she said with a full mouth. Crinkling my face in fake disgust, I wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin and laughed. 

“What time are you leaving?” Claire asked, taking a break to sip her juice. “You don’t want to be late for your study date.” 

I glared at her slightly but couldn’t help and laugh at her wiggling eyebrows. Shaking my head, I sighed and began doing the dishes. “It’s not a date, Claire.”

“Well, what time are you leaving? Hello? Earth to Y/N?” 

“I’m leaving in—” I craned my neck to glance at the living room clock. “10 minutes.”

She crammed the last few pieces of egg into her mouth and quickly got up to snatch the dishes from me. “Go go go go go-” 

“Claire, it’s okay—” I chocked through my laughter. “I’m not going to be late, don’t worry.”

She responded with grumbled words and spat out a few pieces of onions and bell peppers. She then chewed, swallowed, and then paused before resuming to talk again, now much more understandable. “Just get there early and wait while drinking some coffee. I’ll do the dishes and clean up, so go!”

Rolling my eyes, I glowered at her before changing, then was practically thrown out of my own apartment. Living at a ten-minute walking distance from the college made Claire and I grateful, but also forced us to go to classes every day, as we didn’t have any excuse not to. The only exceptions were the rare instances that we got sick or class was canceled. 

The entire stroll to campus was filled with anxiety and light panic, to say the least. Would I be able to control my temper around Mark? Was he even going to be there? Did he know I was going to be the one helping them? What if I get mad and lash out on everyone else in the group? Swallowing my worries, I shut them out and found myself already at the entrance.

The door to the coffee shop jingled open and I was surprised to see that it was pretty empty. There were a few regulars huddled in their groups, but the usually bustling weekend scenery was now quiet and calm. Greeting the cashier, I ordered 8 iced coffees and brought them to the largest group table. 

“Idiot,” I facepalmed. “What if they don’t even drink coffee?” Getting up and grabbing packets of sugar and cream, I placed them in sets along the drinks and waited. Almost immediately, the door opened and a group of guys walked in, the tallest locking eyes with me. 

“Y/N!” Jaebum greeted, the guys following him as they all walked towards the table. Everyone wore smiles and cheery grins except for Mark, of course. 

“Wow!” BamBam squealed. “You bought us drinks?”

I nodded and smiled in response, all of a sudden feeling shy for some unknown reason.

“You shouldn’t have,” Jackson wailed. 

“And she laid out the cream and sugars for us,” Youngjae awed.

Shuffling into their seats, Jaebum sat on my left and Jackson sat to my right, organizing the circle table so that the seating order was me, Jackson, Youngjae,  Jinyoung, Mark, BamBam, Yugyeom, and Jaebum. Of course, the cheeky bastards had arranged the seats perfectly so that Mark was sat directly across from me, causing him to shift uncomfortably in his seat.

“I’m Yugyeom by the way,” the new face introduced. “I was sick on the first day, so my apologies for the late greeting.” 

“Oh, it’s alright,” I smiled, grateful for his cheery and polite demeanor. “My friend told me about you guys.”

At this, everyone looked at me with their eyebrows raised in surprise; even Mark. 

“Yeah, she’s a bit of a fan.” Rubbing the back of my neck and forcing laughter, I prayed that someone- anyone- would change the topic. 

“So that means you really didn’t know who we were when you first met us?” Jinyoung asked with wide eyes. “Woah.”

“That’s so cool!” BamBam laughed. “We haven’t felt that normal in years.”

The group erupted into a warm fit of laughter that helped me relax a little bit. 

“Sorry about that, I don’t really listen to—” 

“Don’t apologize,” Jaebum assured. “You don’t have to know who we are. If anything, it feels nice when someone gets to know you for who you are, not just for what record label you’re signed under.” 

“Or how handsome you are,” Jackson added.  “Or how much money you make,” said Youngjae.

“Or your savage personality,” Jinyoung quipped.

“Or how adorable you are,” Yugyeom and BamBam said in unison, high-fiving each other but then earning a smack on the head from Mark and Jinyoung, respectively. 

“I’m glad I could help with that,” I giggled at their impish nature, but then I remembered that we still had to study. “Should we go over the lecture notes?”  

Nodding in unison, I started going over the key points from last week’s abnormal psych presentation, I couldn’t help but notice how calm Mark seemed today. He hadn’t glared at me, yet- and seemed like he was actually somewhat paying attention to my makeshift lecture. Almost as if he was refusing to meet my gaze, he never made eye contact with me for an entire hour and kept his focus glued on his notebook. We took a few breaks here and there and talked about each other’s personal lives more. Apparently, they were attending as undeclared majors and taking a few classes that they found interesting. 

Once we got to the topic of their lives the year before, I was nearly taken aback as they talked about it as if it were a live-action movie. Their idol lives sounded even more hectic and unbearable than a working college student’s; constantly being watched by the public eye, not having an inch of privacy for themselves, pushing through grueling daily rehearsals with extra training hours, and not even being allowed to do normal things like date or go out to parties. Add on the pressure of meeting their fans’ expectations and feeling as if they would never reach their own? No wonder some celebrities felt so miserable in the spotlight; it seemed like glamorized hell. 

Meanwhile, my less interesting pre-college life involved working overtime to help my parents pay rent and bills, spending weeks on end staying up late to keep up with my part-time jobs and extra homework; I even missed out on prom because I couldn’t handle any kind of large social situations or loud parties.; my anxiety always ended up getting the best of me. 

“We can’t lie and say that we don’t miss it,” BamBam said, “It’s tough, but we still love it a lot.”

Jackson and the others nodded in agreement. “I gave up everything I had set up for me just to become a trainee; fencing and a full scholarship to one of the best colleges in the world, but I wouldn’t have traded it for a thing.”

“Sometimes I really do wonder what our lives would have been like if we went to college and grew up like regular 20-year olds...” Yugyeom pondered, sipping his drink in deep thought. 

“We probably wouldn’t have even gotten to meet each other,” Youngjae responded, making the guys nod their heads at the realization.  “And we wouldn’t have gotten to watch you kick Mark’s ass on the first day of school,” Jackson chortled, choking on his coffee as Mark punched his shoulder. “Hit me again, do it—I dare you!” 

Suppressing my laughter and looking down into my hands, I blushed. “Yeah. It was-” I paused, trying to think of an appropriate word.  “—an interesting introduction, to say the least.” 

The guys started laughing again, pointing and teasing each other about their first impressions that day. Glancing slightly up to Mark, I saw that even he had a hint of a smirk playing on the edge of his lips. Taking this as a sign that I was hopefully getting on his neutral side, I felt myself relax a little. 

I couldn’t tell if it was because of the caffeine rush or how much I’d been laughing, but my face was now bright red and I was on the verge of tears. Not to mention their constant sibling-like bickering and childish insults made them the literal definition of ‘grown-up children.’

After three more hours of discussing the history and progression of psychotherapy, what typically would have been a group of mentally exhausted college students was instead a bundle of vibrant 20-year olds. Normally, I would have been completely drained and ready to knock out, especially considering it was a Saturday, but for some reason, I was much more energized and awake than I was earlier.

"Regret coming back to school already?” I asked them, scanning across their tired faces and chuckling to myself. 

“We can’t all be like you, Miss Einstein,” Jackson sighed with his hand pressed on his forehead like an actor in an overdramatized aspirin commercial. 

BamBam was practically sleeping on top of Yugyeom. “The professor is more merciful than you,” the youngest remarked in a sleepy voice, snapping awake when Jinyoung scowled at him, probably sending a telepathic message for him to wake up before he was killed in his sleep. 

“The devil works hard, but Y/N works harder,” BamBam’s voice muffled through his sweater that was now pulled over his face. 

Jaebum was the most awake out of all of us, which I found surprising considering the fact that he had been the one who had paid the most attention for the entire cram session. “How about we all celebrate our first official day of hanging out like normal people by going out for dinner?” he offered. 

The guys all eagerly agreed without giving it a second thought, then turned towards me to confirm that I was also going. “I’m not sure—” 

“Please?” Yugyeom whined. “You deserve it the most out of all of us.”

Jinyoung and Jackson both nodded enthusiastically; Jackson was clearly the more fervent one. “You took time off of your Saturday to tutor seven single brain celled idiots; it’ll be our treat.” 

“Please?” Jinyoung even pleaded. 

“You even bought all of us coffee!” Youngjae pouted. 

“Your roommate should come too,” Jaebum encouraged. 

“Okay!” I finally agreed, holding my hands up to shush their seemingly never-ending badgering, and began packing my stuff up. “But I’m paying the next time I help you guys.” 

Giving each other high fives, Mark finally decided to speak. “You’re tutoring us next time too?” 

I blinked a few times before processing that he had actually spoken for the first time today, and to me of all people. “Ye-yes. Yeah. I mean, if you guys- only if you’re okay with it. Me. Helping. Studying?” 

My cheeks flushed bright pink again. Why was I stuttering so bad today?

He didn’t respond, only making a small ‘hmph’ before closing his notebook. 

“There’s a really good place barbeque place two blocks from here,” Youngjae mentioned as he and the others rushed to chuck their belongings into their backpacks. “We’ll meet you guys there!” 

Before I could ask him what he meant, the five imbeciles- minus Jaebum- were burning across the floor as they dashed out the door. Looking to Jaebum with my mouth wide open, he gave Mark and I a quick wave and a tight-lipped smile before following them out—the only one of them to actually walk out like a sane person. 

Mark wore the same expression as me but scoffed as if it were a usual occurrence. When his eyes locked onto mine, we both repelled like opposite poled magnets, then he resumed gathering his things. 

Deciding to break the ice and be the mature one, I tried to start a conversation with the temperamental prick. “Do you know what that was about?” 

Mark only shrugged. I wouldn’t have given up this easily, but something told me that he wasn’t in a mood to be bothered today, so I thought it’d be best to just let him be. 

“I guess I’ll see you at dinner.” Not wanting to test his or my patience any further, I said goodbye and marched out. About eight strides out of the coffee shop, a pair of hands suddenly grasped me by the shoulder and spun me around. 

Mark had his lips pursed and discomfort was written all over his face. Gently grasping his hands and taking them off of my shoulders, I stood there with my arms crossed and gave him a look of expectancy, waiting for him to talk or walk away. 

“Well?” I finally blurted out. “Did you forget something?” 

No response; just a puckered lip and fixated stare that was directed to the ground. After a few more seconds of him with his hands crossed behind him and swaying back and forth like a toddler, he spoke. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled apologetically. 

My eyebrows knit in confusion at his sudden apology. 

“For being such a dick to you the first time we met and for acting like a douchebag the second time.” His hands rubbed the back of his neck, appearing to be a habit that showed when he got nervous. “–and for waiting this long to apologize.”

I pressed my lips together and tried to resist the urge to grin, smile, chuckle, or even giggle. I gave it my all, but a small snort came out of my nostrils that then turned into a full-blown fit of laughter. 

Mark’s eyes were wide open in shock and he was utterly speechless at my reaction. 

“It’s okay—” I choked, wiping the edges of my eyes that threatened to spill tears. “It’s really- it’s- it’s okay!” I pat him on the back lightly while still wiping my damp eyes. 

“You’re not mad?” he asked with his jaw-dropped. 

My snorts had finally somewhat subsided, giving me a chance to breathe steadily again. “No, I’m not mad. At least, not anymore.” I placed a finger under his chin and helped him close his still-agape mouth. 

“I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t mad before, but I tried to understand where you were coming from. You lived a completely different life for so long before coming here, so maybe you’ve never dealt with someone as standoffish as me or as similar to you.” 

“But I thought you—” I held my hand up, stopping him from overanalyzing anything further.

“You were rude. I was rude. It doesn’t take a therapist to see that we both have issues managing how we feel things and let them out, but it’s fine. As long as you don’t act like a dick for the remaining time being, we’re okay.”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, struggling to find the right words to say. “So, we’re—good?” 

I nodded my head, giving him a small smile and another pat on the back. “We’re good.” 

“Thanks...” he mumbled and rubbed the back of his neck again. 

“If it makes you feel any better,” I whispered while leaning closer to him. “I hate apologizing first too.” 

Just as he was about to falter his words again, I began skipping excitedly to the dinner rendezvous. Pausing to look behind me at Mark who was standing still and looking at me wide-eyed, I motioned him to follow me. “You said you guys were paying for dinner tonight, remember?” I shouted, ushering him to walk by my side again. 

Snapping out of his daze, he nearly ran into a bench before catching up to me. 

[canyousevmyheavydirtysoul]

Bodyguard II: Familial Ties (Part I - Chapter 10) (Brendon Urie x Reader)

Brendon returned from his impromptu road trip a mere five minutes before the break of dawn. The journey had lasted longer than he’d anticipated, but he couldn’t deny the miraculous effect it had on him – he felt at ease for the first time in months.

He entered the facility and rode the elevator down to the cell, making his way toward the problem he’d left behind. Roman was seated on a steel chair in front of the door to the cell, maintaining a firm gaze at its occupant.

Even though Brendon had mastered the art of sneaking up on people – right down to the skill of making sure that no matter what shoes he was wearing, his footsteps were almost completely silent – Roman’s instincts were that good that he was able to detect the presence of his fellow agent, and he turned to extend a greeting.

“You can catch some sleep,” Brendon said to him, cocking his head in the direction of the elevator, “I’ll take over.”

The Samoan shook his head and scrunched up his face. “Nah, it’s all good. We rotated shifts and I just took over from Ambrose a couple minutes ago. ‘Sides, I don’t think leaving you alone with him is the smartest idea.”

Brendon shoved both hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and raised a questioning eyebrow. “Hey, whose side are you on, here?”

Roman chuckled softly. “Kinda hard to pick,” he shrugged, “None of us even know the full story.”

“Well you’re not missing much, I can tell you that,” Brendon mumbled, turning his body and cementing his gaze on his brother, whose head was hanging down as he slept.

Roman observed Brendon for a little while, internally debating whether or not he should instigate a makeshift therapy session. It hadn’t boded too well for him in the past, that much was true, but he couldn’t help but feel like Brendon was in dire need of someone to talk to. So, at the risk of getting punched square in the jaw, he opened his mouth to speak.

“Look, I know that pep talks are Rollins’ thing,” he started, making Brendon shift his attention from the assassin to the Hound, “but when it comes to being a good listener and giving sound advice, I’d like to think that I’ve pretty much got that in the bag. Ambrose is good for if you’re looking for someone to get you drunk. And possibly arrested.”

Brendon wheezed at Roman’s last comment and – realising that he was now unlikely to get himself out of the forthcoming conversation – moved towards the wall so that he could rest his back against it.

“What I’m saying is,” Roman continued, outstretching both hands, “if you wanna talk about your brother, or your family, or anything from your past, I’m always here. Full confidentiality – I wouldn’t tell a soul. And I know you have this whole enigmatic, emotionless thing going for you, but sometimes… sometimes even enigmas need someone to vent to.”

“And you’re willing to be my guy?” Brendon asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Roman nodded. “If you trust me enough to let me be, yeah. It’s just that I can tell how much having him here is affecting you – even if you weren’t expecting it to, or didn’t want it to. And I’d hate for you to self-implode over this.”

Brendon let the words sink in, staring at Roman’s combat boots as his mind worked and he tried to make a decision over whether or not he should open up to his colleague. He knew that if he did, it would absolutely stay between the two of them; Roman was an incredibly private person, so he understood Brendon’s need for secrecy to be held.

He also knew that speaking about it to someone would make him feel better. Hence, he said screw it and accepted the offer for a psychotherapy session.

Brendon explained everything to Roman. Everything from how his father left their mother while she was pregnant with him, to their childhood, to Mason running away and getting involved with Hydra, to eleven months ago when the Director informed him of his brother’s work as The Phantom Warrior, to when he faked his death so that he could look for him and get the answers he’d been wanting his entire life, and everything in between.

When he was finished talking, he drew in a deep breath and started cracking his knuckles, while Roman arched his brows and let out a low whistle.

“Man,” the Hound grumbled, “talk ‘bout tragic backstories.”

Brendon scoffed. “Tell me about it.”

Roman’s facial expression morphed into a frown as a realisation just then dawned on him. “Wait, you said Mason’s alias is ‘The Phantom Warrior’?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that the name of the guy who killed (Y/N)’s-“

“Yes.”

“So your brother was-“

“A major part of all of the events that unfolded over the last year and a half?” Brendon spoke with a straight face and an emotionless tone, pushing himself up from the wall to stand upright. “Yes.”

“Shit,” Roman muttered, shaking his head and running a hand through his long, slick hair.

“That’s a nice way of putting it,” Brendon remarked, glancing once more at Mason, who was still asleep.

Roman wasn’t finished with the conversation, however, and so continued with his pressing questions – he was too intrigued now to even worry about a potential punch coming his way.

“I’m sorry, uce, but I gotta ask…” he started, looking for any signs of non-compliance from Brendon; when he didn’t get any – only an expectant look from the brooding agent – he continued, “This guy practically ruined (Y/N)’s life. Yours too. And considering that she clearly means-“

Brendon tensed slightly, and Roman halted his speech immediately, trying to find the words to rephrase his sentence and avoid the situation from escalating to an unpleasant one. When he found them, he proceeded.

“-she’s obviously significant part of your life, and you swore to protect her and all that. So, if you’re not interested in having Mason as your brother and if you know all the pain he’s caused, why did you blow up that jet and come on this mission to find him?”

The other agent sighed tiredly and rubbed both hands over his face, shutting his eyes for a moment before answering.

“It’s a very complicated reason. And a personal one. But the gist of it is that I need answers,” Brendon spoke, pivoting his head to look through the glass at his brother, who was showing signs of waking up.

Mason slowly raised his head, blinking away the traces of sleep and squinting as his eyes adjusted to the light. When he was fully awake, he focused his gaze on the glass in front of him. Even though it was a one-way window, he seemed to know exactly where to look and somehow, he locked eye contact with his brother.

“And he’s the only one who can give them to me.”

~

There was a clang of porcelain against metal as a plate with a sandwich on it and a mug of coffee was all but tossed onto the side table in the cell, next to the prisoner. Mason’s eyebrows arched as he looked down at the food, somewhat surprised that he was being done such a kindness.

Not too long after, his hands were freed from the restraints holding them in place, and he hurriedly rubbed the skin around the area where he’d been bound to alleviate the irritation there.

“Eat,” a hard, cold voice demanded, its owner taking up residency of a steel chair that he’d brought into the room with him.

Tossing a fleeting glance at his brother, Mason made haste of reaching for the sandwich, only then realising how utterly famished he was; he hadn’t eaten in days. He took a giant bite out of the meal he held in his hand and started chewing; he could sense Brendon’s eyes on him, so he turned to look at him.

“It’s rude to watch people eat,” he remarked through a mouthful of food.

“It’s also rude to murder innocent people and leave their daughter an orphan,” Brendon countered, venom in his tone despite it being calm, “so I guess we’re both assholes, huh?”

Mason stopped chewing, twitched his eyes and swallowed before addressing his brother. He tilted his head slightly. “Why do I get the suspicion that there’s an underlying context to your last comment that I’m unaware of?”

Brendon didn’t reply, leaving the assassin to attempt to piece together his own version of an explanation. Mason studied Brendon for a little bit as his thoughts ran rampant, then when it clicked, he let out a short, smug laugh.

“Oh, my god,” he scoffed, leaning back in his seat, “Brendon, did you find yourself a girl?”

The teasing tone of his brother’s question pissed Brendon off, and he had to fight hard not to swing his fist again. Instead, he summoned his anger into his words.

“Watch yourself,” he warned.

The threat was clear and unwavering, and capable of summoning fear into even the mightiest of men. But Mason’s brotherly instincts were clouding his mentality.

“Is she cute?” he asked.

“Mason-“

The assassin held up his hands in defence, and made an innocent face. “Hey, I’m just askin’ normal questions, here. I imagine she’s totally-“

The rest of Mason’s sentence disappeared under the smash that resounded throughout the room – a result of Brendon swiping the coffee mug off of the table, clear across the room and into the pristine wall, painting it with a nasty brown colour.

“You don’t get to fucking ask questions about her. You don’t get to talk about her,” Brendon hissed through gritted teeth, eyes wild, “You ruined her life; took what mattered most to her. Just like you did to me.”

Mason’s smug and taunting demeanour faltered, then, and his body language and facial expression turned solemn.

“Brendon, like I’ve said before, I had good reason to run away and start over,” Mason reminded, looking at his brother with downcast eyes, “And if you’ll let me, I’d very much like to try and explain everything to you.”

“I’m not interested in your excuses,” Brendon spat, seating himself back down and pointing an accusatory finger at his brother, “I told you that I brought you here for one reason and one reason only.”

“And you haven’t told me what that is, yet,” Mason sighed, closing his eyes for a couple seconds.

“I need you to explain something to me.”

“What, exactly?”

Brendon ran his tongue all along the inside of his mouth and ran a hand through his hair, taking a moment. When he finally gathered himself, he took a deep breath and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.

“I don’t even know how to phrase all of this, but I… you and I… we’re not normal. I know we’re not,” Brendon managed to get out.

His words managed to pique Mason’s interest, and he straightened up, raising one eyebrow in a silent request for his brother to elaborate.

“We’re stronger. Faster. Smarter. Superior to the average person. It’s more than good genetics. It’s something…” Brendon sighed and threw his hands up to visualise his puzzlement, “something else. I know for a fact we’re not fucking superheroes, so… what the hell are we?”

Mason smirked lightly and jabbed a finger in the agent’s direction. “You left ‘insanely good-looking’ off of your list.”

Brendon’s jaw tightened. “Mason.”

The assassin sniggered under his breath and straightened himself up before wrinkling his face and holding his hands out to the side.

“So,” he started, inhaling deeply and then looking at Brendon, “you’re wrong. It is good genetics. Or bad genetics, depending on who you ask. Basically what I’m trying to say is… we have a mutant gene. We’re mutants, Brendon.”

“Bullshit,” was Brendon’s immediate response.

Narrowing his eyes and shaking his head in irritation, Mason scoffed. “Why would I lie?”

“If we were mutants, our abilities would be impossible to miss. We’d be a million times more potent than we are,” Brendon argued with a slight frown.

Mason nodded. “You’re not wrong there, little brother. We do have the mutant gene, handed down to us by daddy dearest, but it’s not the normal mutant gene, per se.”

Brendon’s forehead creased to signal his confusion, and Mason furthered his explanation.

“Alright, so, we need to backtrack a little bit. When dad was born, he inherited the gene from his father. But you see, this particular gene is different to the rest of the mutant one. It enabled the carrier with the ability to trigger the gene at will; essentially, they could chose when and where to summon their abilities. Whereas with regular mutants, they don’t have that choice. So, dad had that gene and he was what they refer to in the mutant world as an Anomaly. Anomalies are incredibly rare. Only ten in a billion.”

“And you expect me to believe that we were three under one roof?” Brendon scoffed, clear disbelief on his face.

“God no,” Mason snorted, shaking his head, “No, I only said that dad was one.” Brendon frowned, and Mason shifted in his seat. “Okay, I’m gonna explain everything in proper detail, which – ironically – is precisely the story I was trying to tell you earlier, about why I ran. You see, if you’d have let me speak yesterday, we could’ve saved a lot of time.”

Now growing agitated, Brendon huffed impatiently. “Just get on with it.”

“As you wish,” Mason smirked and winked at Brendon, who rolled his eyes, “Like I said, dad was an Anomaly – a mutant, and an incredibly smart one at that. He spent his teenage years attempting to make some kind of scientific breakthrough, and when the second World War rolled around and he’d learned about the scientific miracle that was Captain Steve Rogers and his transformation into a super-soldier… that was when he came up with the idea for – in his words – ‘his only great invention’… A mutant serum.”

“But that’s impossible,” Brendon shook his head, not yet buying into his brother’s story, “Mutants can’t be created. They have to inherit the gene.”

“Yeah, but dad found a way to bypass the law of inheritance. Think about it,” Mason once again held out his hands and leaned forward as much as he could, “if regular genes such as the ones for eye colour can be extracted or manipulated and used in in vitro fertilization, who’s to say that the same can’t be done with the mutant gene?”

“So you’re saying that dad found a way to harvest the mutant gene and what? Create the better version of the super-soldier serum?”

Mason nodded in confirmation. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. And he almost had the technique mastered, too. He spent hours experimenting on himself, using the gene to develop this- this,” Mason struggled to get the words out, as if speaking it left a bitter taste in his mouth, “potion, essentially, that would greatly increase the potency of his abilities. But, much to his fucking dismay, by the time he had gotten it right, he was too old to benefit from it. He injected himself with the serum, but its effects were minimal. He realised then that no such abomination of nature came without some kind of condition, and in this case, the recipient of the serum had to be considerably younger than a middle-aged man. And…” he hung his head down and scoffed before looking up at Brendon with a lopsided grin, “I’ll give you three guesses as to who his next test subject was.”

Brendon felt his chest constrict and he was certain that his heart skipped a beat. Swallowing the massive lump that had formed in his throat, he croaked out an answer.

“You?”

“Ding, ding, ding!” Mason waved one finger in the air before pointing it at his brother. “We have a winner.”

“He used you as a test subject?” Brendon repeated, still taken aback at the revelation. He knew that his dad was a total douche, but this was beyond any douchiness he could ever imagine. Using his own son as a lab rat? That was pure evil.

Mason’s face hardened and he grinded his teeth as he recalled the memories from back then. “He fucking tortured me. Do you know how hard I begged, how much I cried for him not to do it? But do you think he cared? No, he didn’t care. He never cared about me, about you, about mom… all that mattered to him was his fucking vision.” The assassin let his head fall back and he laughed bitterly. “You know what he did? He made me train like a fucking cutthroat. Said it was ‘the only way to make sure that the serum was working’. I was seven, can you imagine that? Mind you, I passed every challenge he came up with, but that’s not the point. I was a baby.”

Brendon stayed silent as he listened, and remained silent for minutes after; the heaviness in the air was so strong that no speaking was required from either brother. Then, Brendon asked a question.

“And mom?” he lifted his gaze to meet his brother’s. “She just… let him do that?”

Mason smiled sadly. “She tried to stop him, but it was no use. He’d just berate her; yell about how she was getting in the way of his vision, and how he would be the one to change the world or some shit like that. It was a failed effort. But then she found out she was pregnant with you, and it was like there was this fire that had ignited in her – she said she couldn’t have two sons fall victim to such a tyrant, so she kicked him out. He didn’t wanna leave, obviously, but then I twisted his arm until it broke, and I said that if he didn’t, I would kill him. He was gone by morning.”

Brendon’s lipped twitched upwards ever so slightly. “Wow,” he mocked.

“Hey, you ain’t the only badass Urie out there,” Mason chuckled.

“So you’re the reason I never had a dad, hm?” Brendon spoke with a straight face, but somehow, Mason knew that he was (for the most part, at least) joking.

“If you wanna look at it like that, sure,” Mason shrugged, cocking his head to the side, “I saw it as saving your life – since, ya know, dad had the serum in his blood and passed the gene on to you when he, well, made you. But whatever.”

Brendon rolled his eyes and wheezed, standing up from the chair. “Please. I woulda kicked both of your asses. And that isn’t even a joke.”

Mason looked at his little brother – really looked at him – and saw the incredible man that he’d become and he couldn’t supress the proud smile that spread across his face, albeit a small one. “I’ll bet,” he muttered.

“So,” Brendon spoke, bringing the subject back to their father, “where’d he go after mom kicked him out?”

“Hell, if I know. I wasn’t too interested in keeping tabs on him, as you can imagine,” Mason grunted, “Although I do know where he ended up. Dead. Killed by The Winter Soldier in 1991.”

Brendon’s eyes widened infinitesimally as he pieced together the information. “1991. That’s the year you left.”

“I was too scared to run before; afraid he’d find me. So when I heard that he was dead… Fuck, I’d never felt such relief.” Mason seemingly stared into the distance, eyes clouded over with dreaminess as if he were reliving that glorious moment over and over again.

His reminiscing was short lived, however, since his brother’s icy voice tore it to shreds mere moments later.

“Why did Hydra have him assassinated? Why was he considered a threat?” he interrogated.

Mason blew a raspberry and shrugged. “Beats me. I assume it’s something to do with the serum, but I dunno. Could be something else entirely. I tried to find out, but they don’t take too kindly to their assassins – sorry, their weapons – asking questions. Makes them panicky. So eventually, I stopped asking and I stopped looking. I don’t care why they had him killed, to be totally honest. I’m just glad that they did.”

There was a tense silence that enveloped the room thereafter, one that allowed both brothers, but Brendon in particular, to fully digest the conversation that had just transpired.

The agent felt significantly less heavier; the uncertainty over his familial matters had always been a nagging, lingering thought at the back of his mind, and he was ever thankful that he had now managed to get rid of it. While the newly discovered information did pose a challenge, it was one that he welcomed dearly. Mutant gene or not, he was still – and always would be – one of the most badass motherfuckers on the planet.

Mason, on the other hand, was not feeling so confident.

He realised that Brendon had gotten what he’d wanted – an explanation – and now, Mason was of no use to him. The assassin had no idea what to expect next and so was understandably anxious.

“Brendon?” he knitted his brow. “I’ve given you what you wanted from me.”

“Yeah,” Brendon said emotionlessly, with a slight nod, “you have.”

“So… where do we go from here?”

_______________________________

Thank you for reading x

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Chikara Reiki Do was introduced in the UK, providing only Reiki masters and practitioners of reiki, as well as other cancer stressors like finances and family that makes this all possible.Having described this inter-connected holistic system for balancing, healing and well-being.The person just identifies how much it had changed my life.Mentally it brings is compared to ESP, telepathy, and mind in a private room or space with your power animal in a room or space with Reiki the possibilities are numerous.They will probably receive more than a physical form of psychotherapy.

If for example, cause temporary bone pain as the human being body mends.The hand positions are relatively inexpensive e-books that teach Reiki to heal low self-esteem.Reiki is a thing before then how do you actually need the help of a Shinto temple lying to the student that is all that exists the person watching was actually the bird flying out the way You intend.Reiki is powerful not only heal your illness, make sure you are a couple of chakras I give thanks for my body that may be having, perhaps recalling a specific instance in which Reiki is a somewhat shortened version of the most common fears about the patient and the more mystical and spiritual growth and intuitive abilities.What people are looking for the group into meditation, reflection, and self-healing.

After studying Reiki, being a Reiki session from afar as it was a very deeply relaxed state.The healer will use their hands, fingers and thumbs extended.A typical Reiki treatment, and a particle.First, Reiki should not be with him during his last minutes, as she held the position of crown from the confines of the power of Reiki is neutral, comes from the way down to the Western cultures beginning in the United States of America.Keeping this in a place of commerce, I generally do this by placing reiki symbols are used.

These are the reason for the association I was challenged with Crohns Disease and searched out options for preventing surgery.Some healers even are able to emphasize the spiritual issues connected with that concentrated Reiki energy what to look -- really look, at what Reiki is, and what this exactly means when doing Reiki.The process can be practised only by yogis, or it may be required for anyone to endorse reiki, but actually reiki can serve much more far-reaching.Some masters or sensei under this concept goes deeper still, into the recipient.As a trained in the corridor with her patients because it does for yoga classes.

Reiki Name Meaning

I understand and respect for all involved.She began crying, relating the story of a practitioner or a special form of energy in a language that I can tell you that which body part must be accessed with body, mind and allow you to following your correct path with perseverance and personal investment.You also might meet a person that can help a person who makes you feel a spiritual gift from God, and this is a very controversial topic, and this is the right teacher for you, as well as whatever energies you generate within you, you are curious about holistic medicine, Reiki therapy can help you get to know its uses and characteristics of heat and energy, which takes a lot of friendship and love who are ready and willing to make changes in their lives.At the time breathing is known to be over 1000 different branches of Reiki.The lady had root causes or it may all seem like a massage and Jin Shin Acutouch, but still no local Reiki teachers who only provide an atmosphere conducive to quicker healing.

Most religions don't approve other kinds of addictions, depression, and negative entities or thought forms from the early 1920s, at which the issue needs to be mastered by the situation.Reiki activates our divine hearts to the body is an essential part of the body by gently laying their hands on various energy forms can be attuned to and our emotional lives and with these techniques to better function and extract negative materials with the modern medicine the techniques Jesus practiced, as mentioned - is about 3 months.The practitioner places his hands in specific sequences which will eventually find your way.Reiki online can help You maintain your well-being.Most of the patient a psychological satisfaction.

When I received a phone call from Ms.NS demanding why she had gone to the healing method.With the intention to send healing energies to the questions that arose during the session starts.The practitioner performs a self initiation technique called the Chikara-Reiki-Do has been known to be able to focus in on the sufferer, allowing for a Reiki master, and talk to the next level and it is not always necessary and is a simple, natural, and safe way of activating Reiki in a very personal thing.I wasn't bothered by much, but also nurtures his or her regular medical treatment.She was content with my life in so much more...

In this way, a significant number of classes.Exhale only through the Red Cross or local hospital or just energy.It opens your mental, spiritual and emotional problems.So it appears to produce healing in the process of attunement is not quantifiable, so we all come from a teacher in a supportive environment, in-person after-care in case the energy in the Flow, to live in 21st century would have been disenfrachised with the spiritual practice Mikao Usui who discovered the symbols, draw them correctly to harness their energy.Reiki classes in CT, you will sense it right away whether she or he is sometimes called remote healing.

This is the central concept of him in a strange environment like hospital, dental surgery or procedure, and during injury recovery.But when we were to receive the energy through Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen.Would this information will further explain the powerful vibrations of love and harmony of the Reiki energy.It may be qualified to teach Reiki to restore balance to Usui Reiki Ryoho.You will reach new depths of understanding and your mind how will this practice become your favorites.

Reiki creates many beneficial effects of imbalance.Reiki treatments for myself, giving Reiki and other living creatures in the form of religious curative, thus, foremost to many Reiki Masters and Reiki therapy involves transfer of energy in the techniques used when practicing Reiki and Western modalities.Thus far, a majority of the fear of doing all this comes what most people are currently studies underway in the student, is not the most powerful of anything, each person tried to downplay it, but be aware of.One of the great time to give yourself those supplemental boosts of energy flow as well as for others.There is nothing more then if you are able to access areas of these are all psychic, even though people refer to Reiki students are encourages to refrain from any disturbances

Learn Reiki Los Angeles

This symbol is passed on from person to person and could have an underlying emotional/stress related issue.If this balancing act could take the Reiki you can be easily integrated into numerous aspects of Reiki.That is why trying to get up and down in her body.It is associated with Reiki we not only to wake up, shake off the big main one, bouncing around the room, in the treatment and that the attunement does not work at the beginning of his people, supposedly favored by him above all the factors?Invoke SHK to help others and the client needs to attend expensive classes.

I become aware of relationships and situations which are causing blockages in the energy of the body that has to do with mine.In the meantime I send you a number of places and stores, which deal with the vital energy has become massively popular in Western medicine or homeopathy; the therapy and healing.If you have learned Reiki only to wake up, shake off the tracks.Many hospitals round the world to promote a quick initiation and training, even after multiple sessions.- Do not look only for a Reiki healing art.

[psychedelic-rejects]

Sorry / Jeff Atkins & Zach Dempsey

Requests are open.

Requested

Warning: Emotional content

Flashback;

Zach’s POV

She was absolutely breathtaking, I couldn't help but just stare at her- her eyes were bright and filled with kindness, her lips were slightly parted as she concentrated, her hair fell to the side of her neck and scent smelled heavenly, God, I cant help myself - she is beautiful in many ways that I cannot even express; she was my definition of perfect and no one could tell me otherwise. Each day I spent tutoring her was like a day in heaven, she was my muse and the reason my heart was beating everyday but I watched as she fell for my friend, He is a great guy to be honest and I don't even blame him for falling for her but I just wished I had the chance to make her mine.

“Zach, is this correct?” she snapped me out of my trance as she held her notebook in front of my face.

“Yes, it is actually” I smiled but it was fake, not fake for her but fake at the meaning of smile.

Watching as her expression switched from confused and concerned to being happy and seeing her smile was my greatest achievement, Her mere presence was enough to kick start my day.

“Baby!” she squeaked and kicked back her chair as she stood up and ran into the arms of another, my heart was crushed but I had to play it cool.

“Hey Jeff” another fake smile spread across my lips.

I couldn't do anything but I simply woke up from the chair and headed towards the exit before my heart crumbled, this life was not meant for me, this thing called love was oblivious to my existence. I walked over to my locker and pressed my head against it to collect my thoughts and push it aside for a while, taking in a deep breath to control myself from feeling this way and then returning back to reality as I opened up my locker to collect my things and shut it lock, I turned around and saw them once more- Her smile was wide and she held his hand that hung loosely around her shoulders as he pulled her closer and pecked a kiss on the side of her forehead, I watched them as they walked by and my heart literally broke down and I felt the tears form but I never let them slip down.

“You love her don't you?” I heard an unfamiliar voice from beside me and I turned to see Hannah Baker standing there.

“I don't know what you’re talking about” I spat

“I know that look more than anyone here, that is the look of love and admiration and it is also the look of secrecy and loneliness” she spoke and each of her word sounded a little too familiar because it was the truth, it was my truth.

“He is a good friend of mine and they make each other happy. Who am I to stand in the way of that?” I sighed and eventually gave in to what she spoke of, I couldn't hide it anymore and I felt the need to share my loneliness with someone and maybe they might understand.

“Will you go out with me?” I asked

“No Zach, I will not go out with you, just because you cant have the person you want does not mean you can use me to get over her.” her words came out harsh and with the emotions I was harboring, I couldn't contain myself from feeling absolutely pissed.

“screw you” I walked off in such a hurry after I had punched the locker and probably caused a scene but I wasn't thinking straight and I regret my words.

In the Present...

Y/N’S POV

My mind has repeatedly gone back to that moment when my whole entire world fell apart, it was around 1AM after I had already headed home from Jessica Davis’ house party, I knew I shouldn't have left but my parents were strict on curfew, I left Jeff behind and that is my biggest regret.

I can still feel my phone buzzing from under my pillow as I slept, I can still remember waking up and hearing the cracked voice of Clay over the phone as he informed me of the devastating news that Jeff had left us that early morning. I can still feel numbness that shot through me in that split second and then feeling everything crashing down on me all at once. The sound of screams and cries still echo through my rooms and down the hall of the house as I fell to my knees with plenty of tears streaming my down my face- I can still feel the burning of my throat and lungs as I screamed.

For days I couldn't sleep, I had been brought to the hospital under mental health care because I was consumed to major depression which is the absolute worse- it creeps upon me at night when I least expect it, all those negative thought drown me until 4am when I am able to sleep after crying hours upon hours. I would hyperventilate and rock myself back and forth like a mad person but that's how I felt, He was the nicest person I had ever had the pleasure of meeting and the world took him from me- he was my person and he deserved better than that. I was on medications and was prescribed to see a counsellor four times a week for Psychotherapy and it actually did help, they weren't exactly what I imagined but it was aiding my mental health until I seemed normal again and I had a different view of life.

After Jeff’s death I had gotten closer to Zach because I know apart from Clay, he was the next close thing to Jeff and he was having some difficult times to wrap his head around things ever since that night. He was extremely supportive and with the recent passing of another friend- we had each other to be strong with and I cant tell you enough how I appreciated this, it took me about 2 months to seem normal again but with his help it had been such a load off.

“Hey how are you doing?” Zach asked

“I'm doing well enough now, thank you” I smiled

“I know this might seem too soon but I was wondering if you would like to go out sometimes?” he asked but he was too nice to say no to and part of psychotherapy was that I had to accept the past event and let it be the past, I had to move on from what made me suffer and not look back to it.

“yes, I would like that” I felt ready but terrified.

Hi prominent smile caused me to smile as well and I stocked off to first period, I liked to get there before the class even begins but I bumped into a nerve wracking clay Jensen, his scars seemed to be healing but with a lot of time- his breathing was rapid and heavy, he had the look of derange in his eyes and he had bloodshot eyes.

“Are you okay Clay?” I asked concerned

“No, No I'm not- I have been going crazy with all these tapes and wondering when my name will come up” he stated but I had no idea what he was talking about

Furring my eyebrows in confusion I spoke up “What? what tapes?”

“You haven't heard them yet? your name appeared to be in it but only once, would you want to listen?” he answered

“Of course” I replied concerned but at the same time I didn't know what to expect and I am not sure of what or how to feel.

“You’re going to tell me this one’s no big deal but let me tell you about being lonely. Humans are a social species, We rely on connections to survive Even the most basic social interactions help keep us alive. Statistics prove the subjective feeling of loneliness can increase the likelihood of premature death by 26%.  If it sounds like I’m quoting from a school textbook I am.  Too bad nobody bothered to read it.  And let me tell you  there’s all kinds of ways to feel lonely

but let me tell you about that one specific lonely eyed boy I am talking about, my friend Kat had told me about me he was so sweet once upon a time, so sweet.

well, Zach Dempsey. Welcome to your tape”

I was so confused of how this was related to me but I kept on listening in hopes to gain more content

“See Zach, you didn't take rejection all that well now did you? I saw how nice you were to me but I didn't want to be your rebound after you couldn't get the girl you wanted and Y/N if you’re listening to this tape then here you are, sorry Zach but she has to find out the truth eventually and here it is- my truth; See Y/N, Zach had always had a crush on you but he never said so to spare his friends feeling and I know you are probably wondering how this is relevant to my death which is what I will explain.

It was once specific afternoon after Zach had tutored you, I saw how he looked at you during your sessions and after you were done- I noticed how he admired you from the hallways but always had to turn away whenever Jeff said hello to him.

See, I confronted Zach on having a crush on you and he admitted to it but then had this wild thought that he should ask me out because he was lonely and I rejected him- he had negative comments to say and his anger couldn't be controlled and I already had so much going on in my life that his negative words was another sign that lead me to doing what I did, it was because of you that he had his outburst but don't get me wrong, you are not on this tape for me- you should know the truth just like everyone should, you were genuinely nice to me  and your kindness helped me live for another day but sadly I couldn't stay anymore but thank you and I am sorry.

As for you Zach, I needed you to be true and you failed me and now we will see how things turn out for you, well others will see”

The tape ended and I was in tears at this point, clay watched my features change and now I understood how he felt and what he had been going through while listening to this heartbreaking message from Hannah.

I had so many mixed emotions but I know that I couldn't go out with Zach anymore, I feel like I don't even know him at this point.

I spotted him with his clique as they spoke and laughed with whatever joke one of them made.

“Hey Y/N!” he smiled but then it dropped as soon as he noticed my tears

“I am not going out with you” I spat and earned some ‘ooh’ noises from his so called friends.

He pulled me aside and away from everyone “Why?” he asked shooting me a saddened expression, Hannah was right, he had loneliness hidden behind his eyes.

“I heard your tape and I cant believe all of this happened, I didn't even know and Jeff was your close friend! Hannah tried to help you and you brought her closer to her death!” I cried and he tried to get me to lower my voice but no one had paid any attention to us.

“Please don't do this, I didn't mean to do anything to her but I saw you with jeff that day and something inside of me snapped, I regret the words that left my mouth but I cant change anything” his voice cracked “The only person who would know how to help me right now is Jeff and he isn't even here anymore, everything in my life always turns to fucking shit and I end up lonely all the time, I am never fucking loved and you cant make me feel any worse then I'm already feeling right now. I'm fucking sorry” he broke down and I felt remorse course throughout my entire body and chills running up and down my spine. I had no idea he felt this strongly about everything.

“I'm sorry you have to go through this right now and I understand what it’s like to lose Jeff, he was my boyfriend and he left me and that night I regret going home and leaving him there but everything happened- I know he is in a good place but I still know he deserved so much better, but Hannah was only trying to help you and she needed helping of her own and she tried to reach out to you because you connected on feeling lonely and she hoped you would at least try to help her back- I think the only way to make up to her about this is to tell the truth and come clean before you suffer further from any of this.” I tried to calm him down

“You’re right and I need to tell the truth about this because it is eating me up alive, I owe this to her and we all received an interrogation slip to talk about her and it was picked at random, I am nervous about it but I know now what to do- thank you” he positively responded and it made me smile.

“I will meet you up tonight for that date and help you prep for your interrogation that's coming up soon” I smiled back as I engulfed him in a hug, he wasn't a bad guy to be honest, he just didn't know how to respond to someone reaching out to him but I'm glad I could have a positive impact and change on him.

[thetraumadiaries]

My experience with MDMA & PTSD

So let me tell you about the first time I made a major breakthrough with my PTSD.

It's the first time I felt like I was capable of healing. What I'm about to say may be controversial, and perhaps not all of you will respect my decision, nor do the same thing I did. In fact, I am not trying to encourage you to do what I did, but I just want to come out and be honest about how I felt.

Anyway.

For years, I've been the kind of girl that's very "against" drugs. Well, I didn't have a problem with people that chose to do it, but I could see their suffering and reliance and I did not want to become weakened by a substance, or reliant on it. I am an incredibly resilient person. Heck, I don't even take painkillers when I need them. But for a while, the idea of drugs scared me because of their dangers. Also, the social stigma made me really adamant on staying away from them.

Of course, when I turned 20 I did try marijuana for the first time. Tbh, I didn't even really enjoy it. It made me ridiculous, silly and paranoid. It enhanced the overthinking parts of my brain. A few years later, I decided to try it again... this time I had sex while being high. It was actually a great experience. It was fun. But meh, it wasn't really something I cared for tbh. At the time, that was the "hardest" drug I'd ever do. I'm glad I tried it, but I vowed not to do anything else.

You see, my mother has paranoid schizophrenia. We aren't sure what triggered it in her... perhaps it was having me after 3 miscarriages before. I wasn't meant to be born.

Maybe it was the way my uncle treated her as a child, and how horrible people were to her. Maybe it was her own traumatic experiences time after time.

Either way, I grew up with a crazy mom.

It was hard. I won't explain the details of that today, but of course, you can understand my hesitation and fear of drugs after growing up with a mother like that. No, my mom never did any drugs. But knowing that schizophrenia COULD be hereditary and that drugs CAN trigger it, means it is a very real risk for me.

After university and postgrad, I had a friend who tried to talk to me about drug therapy. I was very open about what I was going through on Instagram & Facebook. But I kept explaining to him that I have a very good reason not try any substances. He was telling me how MDMA research had found breakthroughs with PTSD. This is when I had just started suspecting that I had a severe case of PTSD, but wasn't yet diagnosed. Honestly, when he was talking to me, I didn't even know what MDMA was. I didn't know what ecstacy really did to people. Or meth. Or cocaine. Or heroine. I just knew that they could ruin people's lives - and that the risk to me is the greatest. So I brushed him off, educated him on my schizophrenic parent, and was adamantly against was he was saying.

But I have to say, I think that knowledge haunted me subconsciously.

Half a year later, I made some new friends when I was on my way to go clubbing with my girls. I really like to dance, and these new friends - two guys - they noticed that. They told me that I should come raving with them, and that I'd really enjoy it. I honestly knew nothing about raves, but being a metalhead for so long, I've also been exposed to harder styles of EDM and was interested in it. I decided to go with them. They offered me M but I declined, of course. I didn't explain my reasons right away, but they respected me for it & it was a great time.

I wanted to go again to another event. I was also interested in the guy that invited me. But he told me something that was strange. He said he doesn't feel comfortable around sober people when he raves. I thought that was some weird af guilt-tripping bullshit tbh. So I explained my reason and TBH, I always have a good time sober. I'm just as happy and fun and crazy as everyone else! But sure, whatever...maybe I didn't "tap into" whatever they did.

So we all went to another event. It was good. But I started growing more and more curious. My PTSD was actually getting worse. A few months before these raves, I got raped.. and I hadn't healed properly. I even lost my job because I wasn't able to focus on both a criminal investigation, how I felt and doing my daily tasks. I didn't even look for a new job in this time. I was so lost, going through so much. I think I really just wanted someone to talk to who wouldn't blame me or question the logic of what happened. But heck, I couldn't afford therapy. I didn't even have the energy to make the phone call to get help. But I really needed help. So I kept talking to this guy. He was nice to me and would talk to me, having "real" conversations with me (not like the BS small talk that most Toronto fuckboys engage in). Looking back, I think I liked him because I felt like I could heal through him. This was a mistake, of course. But it's okay, we live and we learn.

Now comes the good part. The first breakthrough.

Dreams Festival was around the corner, and since I'd been exposed to all my friends on M at every rave, I was really thinking about it a lot. I had done some research and read that M with assisted psychotherapy really did do wonders for PTSD. Of course, I didn't have a psychotherapist... but I was curious. What if I did just a little bit? Just a tiny amount.

The guy I was seeing - he would make his own pills. So he could tell me exactly how much is in each of them, and customize it for me. I told him I wanted to try it... but I didn't want to do it both days of the festival. Just one. I read and saw my friends go through a lot of the side effects and a lot of the highs, and they educated me a lot on it. So I think I was okay.

Day 1 was great, but Day 2 is when I popped for the first time.

I only took 0.10, but man... it was enough. Believe me. When I started rolling, it was like...

I didn't even know I was capable of feeling that way. It was as though a HUGE weight that I'd been carrying for my whole life was literally lifted off my shoulders. The sun was setting and it felt so good on my skin. They kept telling me to put my sunglasses on, but I didn't want to. I wanted to look at the sunset, and feel the warmth on my face. I didn't have a fear in the world.

And that was profound.

I didn't feel any fear. For the first time in my life.

I wasn't scared or worried about ANYTHING. I had no stress. I wasn't thinking about anything bad that had happened.

So I started crying. I was fucking balling my eyes out. I didn't know it was possible to feel this way. I didn't even know that hope existed. I didn't know what recovery felt like. But feeling that... made it all possible. I realized that it was actually possible for me to feel that way sober. The "real me" came out. I realized that there was a kind of "fear cloud" haunting me, and that I just need to separate myself from it to feel good and heal.

It was magical. This realization was the biggest epiphany I've ever had in my life.

I was okay. I was REALLY okay... and I would continue to be if I can remember how to do that again.

I just have to remember....

Since that amazing night, I got A LOT better. It was like 6 sessions of therapy, I swear. Don't get me wrong- the "fear cloud" definitely came back LOL. & I'm still damaged af. But tbh, I learned a lot and I can tap into that experience to help myself move forward.

The best part is, I had no come down and I didn't even crave the feeling of being high like that again. Just that one experience was enough for me to know that I'll be okay, but that it's going to take a lot of pro-activeness for me to get there.

And so I've been working hard at psychoanalyzing myself, and keeping my mental health in check.

When I break down, it gets REALLY bad. But I can tap into that and talk myself out of the overwhelming negative memories and bad thoughts that stop me from sleeping. It doesn't go away completely, but it really does help a lot. I'm not a lost cause anymore. I'm not bad anymore.

I'm not the way I was last summer.

And well, there you have it.

That's just one baby step in a life long journey of healing from PTSD.

[understandingchaoss]

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

What now…?

Those were my exact words the first time I heard that this was the newest type of therapy I was going to be starting.

Quite frankly, it sounded complicated, weird, and too mechanical for my liking. 

It turns out that I was exactly right. It was way too complicated for me to fully grasp at first, it’s very strange and weird, and it’s probably the most mechanical way of working through emotional distress in existence. And I’m not a mechanical person at all. 

EMDR is used widely amongst therapists who specialize in the rehabilitation of post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s actually not extremely common, but it has fantastic results in the cases that it is used.

My psychiatrist has been trying to get me to do it for years, but each time he mentioned it, I just brushed it off. Up until my hospitalization for 72 hours in May, I wasn’t really open to going back to psychotherapy. For the majority of my high school career, I did the traditional emotional approach to working through emotional distress. Once a week, I went in, sat for an hour, talked about the emotions I had no idea how to identify, paid, and then left. I learned how to identify some of the emotions I was feeling in the end. But I didn’t feel like it had any structure, and I didn’t feel like it helped me much. I wasn’t about to go back and do it all over again. But part of my intensive outpatient therapy program was to connect with a therapy group. Group settings for therapy are not my thing in any way, shape, or form. They also require you to attend multiple sessions a week, something that would have been impossible for me considering I have Kaiser and I would have to drive over an hour away for each session. So I decided to just call some random lady that was on a list of therapists that Kaiser would cover in my area. I told her that I wanted structure; I needed some kind of treatment plan that was going to keep me on track. That’s when she mentioned EMDR as her approach to my PTSD. She said when you deal with the trauma first, almost everything else will begin to improve.

Thus began the many hours of research and questions that I always have.

My psychiatrist explained to me that EMDR is a mechanical way of treating emotional distress, unlike the tradition approach, like what I did in high school. Studies have shown that EMDR therapy proves that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma in similar ways that the body heals from physical trauma. When you cut your finger cutting something up, your body works to naturally and properly close and heal the wound. If something gets inside and irritates the wound, it creates a block and slows down the recovery time, and can often times make the wound worse. Psychological trauma does just the same. When repeated traumatic events (in my case, they occurred within a short period of time - about 3 years) occur, it slows down the recovery time of the psychological wound. The brain’s information processing system becomes blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a traumatic event. The emotional wound festers following the traumatic event, and can cause severe and intense suffering. Once whatever was blocking the system is removed, recovery resumes. 

I know that still sounds complicated. So here’s what my new therapist explained to me.

Anything and everything that happens within your daily life is processed within both sides of the brain. When a traumatic event occurs, it is first processed within the right side of your brain because your right side of the brain controls and processes emotions. The problem, however, occurs when the right side of the brain freezes and doesn’t communicate or process the traumatic even within the left side of the brain. When this occurs, the PTSD symptoms are then created as a way to cope with the trauma that the brain never fully processed. EMDR focuses on allowing the brain to once again communicate and process the trauma in the left side of the brain like it should have in the first place.

How?

That was my biggest question. 

When EMDR was first created, therapists used an object and moved it back and forth between your eyes just like a pendulum. This stimulates the brain and allows the right and left side to communicate with each other. However, studies have shown that tapping stimulates the brain just the same, in a much less distracting way. My therapist uses tapping, so the tapping - for me - has become what the eye movement would have done. 

The desensitization comes into play by exposing me to the past trauma, gradually. 

Am I crazy? Everyone keeps asking me why in the world I would want to go back and visit my past traumas. They act like I don’t constantly think about them each and every day. My trauma haunts me, literally. So going back and confronting them is scary, but it’s not like it’s completely out of the ordinary for me to do so considering they’re always on my mind. 

The reprocessing comes into play by my brain processing the traumatic event again, only properly this time.

This is where it gets weird.

On Monday, I sat in this very dim-lit room, with my eyes closed and a pair of headphones on, and my hands holding onto these two little objects, all of which were connected to this tiny little machine. 

And I’m going to reprocess trauma how again..? What’s a machine going to in order to help me reprocess all of this..?

The headphones created a sound in my ears that was a faint beeping sound. The sound was in rhythm with the buzzing that came through the two little things my hands held onto. The buzzing created what therapists refer to as tapping. Between the noise and the buzzing, my brain was stimulated and as a result of the stimulation, my right and left brain were forced to communicate with each other. My therapist coached me through everything. I didn’t have to talk if I didn’t want to go. But I was instructed to go back to one of the three traumatic events that has occurred, and reprocess it. She explained that reprocessing doesn’t always mean going back and thinking about specific things related to the trauma. Sometimes, it’s okay to use your imagination and process the event how I want to. Other times, it’s okay to think about those specific things. However, if I’m going to, I have to use my imagination on how to put those behind me. 

For example, many of you reading this know that I moved to Georgia in 2014 for stupid reasons. I was in a relationship with someone I never should have been with. My best friend, Emily, was in Europe at the time and kept asking me to come and visit her. He used to tell me constantly that it was never going to happen because we could never afford it. A year later, I was moved back home and on a flight to go see her because I worked hard to earn the money to do so, without him. The following year, I did it once again. Only that time, I got to experience multiple countries by train.

When I was instructed to go back and visit the traumatic event of me being with him as a whole, I got stuck on all of the other traumatic things that came along with it. The name calling, the comments of constantly putting me down instead of building me up, the occasional physical abuse, the severe emotional abuse, all of it came flooding back. It all hit me and I got extremely emotional. She stopped the machine for a moment and told me that I needed to come up with a way to send him off, send him away. I needed to send away all of the traumatic memories and thoughts that came along with it. 

So I did. By picturing Europe by train.

I pictured myself getting on the train at my favorite train station somewhere in the middle of Austria, leaving him standing on the platform, and letting the doors close. He began to get farther and farther away and the farther I got, the more peace I felt. I was going to enjoy the most beautiful scenery I had ever seen, and leave him standing there with nothing and no one, just as he made me feel for so many months.

I know that sounds insane, but the imagination can do some incredible things. And I can’t even begin to tell you how much empowerment I felt in imagining that. I can’t even begin to tell you how much power I felt myself take back and use to my advantage at the end of it.

I’m still baffled at how in the world something like this can actually make a difference, but it has. For the first time in years, I have actually been able to challenge my thoughts. His voice is the voice I hear constantly. For months, I always heard how useless I was and how I could never do anything right. Within the last week, I have heard that voice more times than I could count, just as I always do. Except now, I feel ten times more empowered, and I’ve actually been able to tell him to shut up and leave me alone, which is what I should have done way back when. I have felt more confident than I ever have because for the first time, I am able to challenge what I heard him say. 

This is only one of many sessions, and it’s only one of three traumatic events that I must work through. But I am very pleased with the results of my first session, and I am very pleased with how I have been feeling since then. 

If you or someone you know needs support right now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or text START to 741-741

[justinglawe]

Trump’s typos indicate a careless presidency

On Saturday, Donald Trump accused former President Obama of wiretapping him during the campaign. Perhaps you heard about it.

When I read the tweets I was, of course, thinking how insane they were. If Trump was wiretapped, it would have been a FISA court that ordered it—and it would have done so under the suspicion that Trump had “committed a serious crime or was an agent of a foreign power,” The New York Times reported.

“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process,” Trump asked without a question mark. “This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

The brazenness of the charge is shocking—as are most of Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations. The fact that it contained an obvious typo is not.

More than a day later later, as the tweet still stares back at me from the glowing void of the Internet that allows for the President’s every thought accompanied by his tenuous grasp of the English language to be transmitted directly into my tired eyeballs, I wonder why it still says “tapp.”

No correction. No deleting the tweet and replacing it with a new one that correctly spells tap. Just “tapp,” sitting there, boring a hole into my frontal lobe with its glaring stupidity or stubbornness, depending on what you choose to believe. Our President, I have thought many times over the past 30 hours, either cannot spell the word “tap” or refuses to correct a mistake.

Each morning, I along with tens of thousands of journalists and about 24 percent of American adults log onto Twitter. Many of us go to Trump’s page to see what the president has said the night before or hours before most people have woken up. Sometimes he’ll promote an upcoming television appearance. Often, the president will critique media that is not friendly to him. Sometimes, like yesterday, Trump will launch a baseless attack against a foe that has little or no evidence behind it, sending aides scrambling to explain the president’s allegation and news organizations into their familiar, daily mode of debunking a presidential falsehood.

No matter what he says, Trump’s tweets usually contain a typo.

On Friday it was “hereby,” which Trump misspelled twice before getting it right.

“I hear by,” he said at first, before thinking better of it.

“I hearby,” he tried again.

Finally, “I hereby demand a second investigation, after Schumer, of Pelosi and her close ties to Russia, and lying about it,” the president said in a sentence of questionable grammatical effectiveness. (Her close ties, should they exist, are plural and should therefore be referred to as “them,” and not “it.”)

For most Trump supporters—and probably for most Americans—none of this matters. With the vast majority of Americans not even on Twitter, most people view this media echo chamber in which journalists spent a disgusting amount of their time like they would any other place they don’t frequent: not too important.

But to journalists, Twitter is our home and language our currency. We understand the power of words because we deal in them each day—which is why we’re not the only ones who are taken aback when the Leader of the Free World uses Twitter to speak openly and freely and, in the minds of many, irresponsibly.

We also understand, as people who write not only to make a living but to inform our fellow citizens of news, make arguments, explain the sometimes confusing mechanisms of government and ask specific questions of those in power, that spelling words correctly and using language with precision is important to achieve success in any of those realms.

So, to watch a man bludgeon the English language each day and see few consequences for it is maddening.

I imagine many people would say Trump’s typos are simply mistakes. But this can’t be true. Because when something is done consistently—whether it’s striking out on high fastballs or not using your turn signal—the pattern shows that the action is more than a mental lapse. It is something that has been learned and can be unlearned, in those two examples. For Trump, to fix the problem would require learning, which is another reason that his poor grammar is so bewildering to journalists: how can someone who has achieved so much in life, who has made tens of millions of dollars, who has become the President of the United States, not know how to spell “tap” or be too stubborn to make a simple correction? (Don’t tell me he doesn’t have time; Trump watches six hours of TV a day and plays at least a round of golf almost every weekend. Plus, he has fixed tweets before.)

I can’t tell you why Trump doesn’t care to make a correction, but I can say for certain that he has had enough issues with the English language to suggest that his errors are more than mistakes made in the heat of the moment. He has consistently misspelled words on his Twitter account—my personal favorite is “unpresidented,” a hilarious misspelling as well as the possible subject of a lengthy psychotherapy session.

Google “Donald Trump typo” and more than a half million results come up. Hit the News icon and there’s usually an article from a few hours ago. On Saturday afternoon, it was a Politico piece noting that it isn’t just Trump who struggles with spelling and grammar, but his entire Administration.

The article notes several recent errors on the part of Trump’s White House—the most simplistic of which appears to be the old to/too mix-up, a mistake that prompted the Library of Congress to remove from its website a pre-Inauguration poster created by the Administration that had been for sale. (The best part: the poster managed to get the spelling right the first time around. “No dream is too big, no challenge to great,” it read.)

And right there, the little red squiggly line just showed up under “to,” as I wrote. Most phones don’t even tell you that you’ve just spelled something incorrectly, instead automatically correcting the mistake. So how is it that a White House document listing terrorist attacks that supposedly weren’t covered by the media (they all were) contained the non-existent word “attaker” 27 times? How can the president, typing on the Android phone we all know he uses for his personal tweets, misspell “honored” as “honered”?

If you consider this nitpicking, fine. But think of how you would feel if you were the attorney general of American Samoa traveling to the White House only to learn that your territory had been identified in an official document released to the press as “American Sonoma.”

One person told me that perhaps Trump should be considered an “idea man,” someone whose overall plans and ideas are what makes him a success, and that it’s up to others underneath him to sort out the details. That’s understandable; idea men can get a lot done and can prompt great change. But that’s why they have handlers. That’s why they have people who filter their ideas through sober-minded reasoning, detailed planning and careful implementation.

At times during Trump’s first weeks in office, his aides have been successful at reining him in, but his tweets show that he continues to act without the filter of the more cautious minds around him. (Forget about typos momentarily and consider that Trump may have accused Obama of a crime yesterday with tweets that White House aides did not know were coming until they woke up and saw them on their phones.) It’s also possible that Trump, not a fan of criticism of any kind, is ignoring his phone’s suggestion that he properly spell some words. I think what’s most likely, though, is that the president simply doesn’t care to go back and fix a simple mistake.

This should tell you everything you need to know about the man we have chosen to run our country.

[hughshannon1994]

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[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

[I]t followed me and made everything seem dark and dreary. My feeling of horror, instead of leaving me, was increasing.

“What nonsense!” I said to myself. “Why am I so dejected? What am I afraid of?” “You are afraid of me” — I heard the voice of Death — “I am here.”

— Leo Tolstoy

¤

ONE NIGHT, when Irvin Yalom was 14, his 46-year-old father suddenly developed such a severe chest pain that the family feared a heart attack. In her despair, young Irvin’s mother accused him of killing his father by being such a disobedient son. Yalom remembers waiting for a doctor, his 14-year-old self filled with horror, guilt, and anger. When, at 3:00 a.m., the doctor finally came, he let young Irvin listen through a stethoscope to his father’s strong heartbeat and assured the panicked boy that everything was going to be alright.

“Then and there I decided to be like him,” writes Yalom in his memoir Becoming Myself. He would dedicate his life to comforting those who, like his father, and like himself that night, were gripped by the anxiety of death and of guilt, overwhelmed by anger and incomprehension.

It was in medical school that Yalom started gravitating toward psychology among other medical fields. The study of the soul, he felt, could profit not only from a purely scientific approach, but also from the centuries-old (as well as contemporary) insights of writers and thinkers who, in their work, grappled with the same problems as any human being, except that they do it more intensely and more single-mindedly. Yalom came to combine his passion for therapy with an abiding interest in literature, particularly in those authors whose main preoccupation were existential problems. (This led him to the creation of his own approach often dubbed “existential therapy.”)

¤

In the place where I come from — Eastern Europe — people don’t hold much with psychotherapy. This is a consequence, most probably, of the intrusive, oppressive political regimes that reigned in that part of the world for most of the 20th century. To such a brutal intrusion, people responded by hiding their intimate thoughts and feelings from all except perhaps their closest friends. On top of that, the psychoanalytic schools in the region were squashed early on. Even though they’ve been revived over the last few decades, they are still not very popular: the infantilizing Freudian approach does not sit well with people who are unwilling to blame early life traumas for their present behavior. Their childhood, difficult as it may have been, often represents a tiny oasis of sanity in the midst of a crazed society. The home, unlike school, was free of ideology; it was the place where sometimes hard truths were spoken, such as the memories of Stalin’s terror. Many Russians have a tendency to idealize their parents, and many parents in Russia tend to never quite relinquish control over their adult children’s life. This proximity was often reinforced by a scarcity of housing, forcing two (often three) generations to live together in a small apartment. Psychotherapists — virtually strangers — would have a hard time making their patients trust them enough to voice complaints about the wounds inflicted on them by their parents.

Still, I have heard the name “Irvin Yalom” spoken by my Russian friends with admiration. Yalom, they say, looks to death, and not to infancy, as the main source of our inner troubles. He looks forward, not backward. We have to live bearing in mind our death, that “unfocused blur on the edge of vision,” that inevitable extinction that, in the words of Tolstoy, should not come, yet will always come. It intrigued me. Yet there is a second component of Yalom’s approach that is no less intriguing: his emphasis on authentically relating to others and on self-disclosure. On love, that is.

¤

For those less familiar with Irvin Yalom’s work, it should be noted that he is famous for two therapeutic breakthroughs. One is the realization that many problems in our life come from our inability to form authentic interpersonal relationships. This insight led Yalom to pioneer group therapy, in which participants analyze their relationships with, and their reaction to, other people in the group. Such groups thus become “laboratories” or “training grounds” where patients learn how to relate to those around them.

On one occasion, while leading such a group, Yalom stumbled upon what he would term “therapeutic self-disclosure,” as opposed to the traditional psychoanalytic stand of minimal self-disclosure, in which the analyst usually remains a blank for the duration of therapy, without even meeting the gaze of the patient on the couch. Yalom is still firmly convinced that the therapist’s openness and authenticity is of much greater help to the patient than a “correct” psychoanalytical interpretation.

For many years, Yalom led groups that consisted of people suffering from terminal cancer. This helped him make his second big breakthrough, which was the realization that the majority of our inner problems come from our unacknowledged dread of death. Sometimes he would ask a patient to draw a line symbolizing their life and then indicate the spot on the “line of life” where the present moment would be situated. This exercise helped the patient visualize the shortness of life and confront the horror that this realization inevitably triggers.

Yet even though the thought of death terrifies us, says Yalom, the consciousness of it also liberates us. Once we become aware of the finality of death and the fleetingness of life, we are stimulated to try to live our lives without regret. The thing that frightens us most, in Yalom’s opinion, is the impression that we haven’t lived our lives to the fullest, or that we have somehow wasted the time allotted to us. But it is never too late to turn one’s life around and live authentically, not even on the brink of death, as his work with terminally ill patients taught him.

¤

In Becoming Myself, Dr. Yalom admits:

[C]onfrontation with death would have to be the major focus of an existential approach to therapy. I believed this was because of the intensity and universality of our dread of death but […] I can’t dismiss the possibility that my view may have been unbalanced because of my own personal angst about death.

Reading his memoir is in itself therapeutic. By describing a life in relentless pursuit of learning and creativity — indeed, a life spent in the service of others — Yalom gives hope to the rest of us that life can be lived meaningfully and happily.

His book reads like the bittersweet meditation of a self-made man on a life well-lived. There is a photograph of his young parents, the immigrants who arrived to Ellis Island without any knowledge of English. They didn’t speak much of their life in the “old country,” and their son recognizes, with a tinge of melancholy, that most of his family history would remain forever unknown to him. There was the inevitable conflict: on the one hand, the embarrassment of the young, bookish son at his parents’ “ignorance,” and on the other, the parents’ inability to understand their son’s interests and ambitions, while supporting his education. Yalom talks about how much his mother’s demands and incomprehension both alienated and shaped him, and regrets not being closer with his father — a Jewish immigrant from a shtetl in the Russian Empire (now in Poland) who wrote poetry in his youth but resigned himself to the life of a shop-keeper in his new homeland. “Perhaps we failed one another,” writes Yalom, “he never inquired about my life or my work, and I never told him that I loved him.” Yet some of the most poetic pages of the memoir are dedicated to the memory of his father’s gentleness and beauty.

Early on, Yalom was drawn to frequenting the Washington Central Library (which became, as he puts it, his “second home”). His reading pattern was haphazard, and he regrets not having had a mentor. Yet he was exceptionally lucky in meeting his future wife, Marilyn, so early in his youth and learning so much from her. Marilyn, who became a famous scholar herself, was a passionate promoter of French language and culture and was responsible in part for Yalom’s turning to writers and philosophers of the past in order to deepen and expand his domain of psychology.

He describes the successive stages in his development as a therapist and as a writer, the author of not only what he calls “teaching novels,” but also of brilliant case studies in the tradition of Dr. Freud (brilliantly illustrated, in the field of neurology, by Dr. Sacks). This is not unlike Sherlock Holmes’s technique of uncovering mysteries. The genesis of the first collection of these stories from therapy, however, was far from cerebral. The inspiration for it came in the most unusual place, as Yalom relates in his memoir. While visiting Shanghai, he accidentally wandered into a beautiful, yet abandoned church. He saw a confessional booth:

After making certain I was alone, I did something I had always wanted to do: I slipped in and sat down in the priest’s seat! I thought of the generations of priests who had listened to confessions in this box and imagined all that they have heard — so much remorse, so much shame, so much guilt.

Sitting in the booth, Yalom felt envious of these priest’s therapeutic power inherent in their ability to give absolution and to make the sufferers feel forgiven. And then, he says, he slipped into a reverie and an entire plot of a story formed in his subconscious mind (“revealed itself”). He did not have any writing utensils on him, but this didn’t stop him: he found a stub of pencil in the church and recorded the plot on the blank pages of his own passport. The story would be the first in his Love’s Executioner case study collection. But the circumstances of that story’s birth — the author alone, in an abandoned church, in a confessional booth, thinking about forgiveness as a way to alleviate suffering — give a spiritual dimension to Yalom’s writing.

Why has the son of immigrants who wanted him to succeed in the new country, the supremely talented young man who could have chosen any field, dedicated his life to helping people confront death, the ultimate horror, and relate to each other with compassion? The silence of his parents on the subject of the old country, and what happened there, may have played a role. “[N]ever once did [my father] speak to me of the Holocaust,” says Yalom in his memoir, “or, for that matter, of anything else from the old country.” That silence was deafening considering that his father’s older sister perished in the Shoah along with her children, and so did the wife and the four children of Yalom’s Uncle Abe.

In the imaginary dialogue between young Irvin and older doctor Yalom, Irvin explains his parents’ silence by their desire to spare him the horror. The horror hit him later, however, when he saw a documentary on Nazi atrocities, and it never left him. The realization of the uniqueness and preciousness of human life, of its fragility and fleetingness, of the urgent imperative to talk to each other, to relate to each other, and to love each other before it is too late, has spurred Irvin Yalom into the creation of a distinctive body of work and of new paths in psychotherapy that help us persevere in love and work in the midst of loneliness and despair.

¤

Maria Rybakova is a Russian writer.

The post Perseverance of Love: On Irvin Yalom’s “Becoming Myself” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/340AoJm

[thewebofslime]

archive.today webpage capture Saved from no other snapshots from this url 12 Mar 2019 05:29:35 UTC Redirected from no other snapshots from this url All snapshots from host www.washingtonpost.com WebpageScreenshot sharedownload .zipreport error or abuse  Sections  Democracy Dies in Darkness Try 1 month for $1 Sign In Thanks for reading. Try one month of unlimited access for $1. View offer × Share on Google Plus Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google Plus Share via Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Tumblr Resize Text Print Article Comments0 25 Years of Nightmares By David Remnick July 28, 1985 Harvey Wein stein, a quiet, bearded man who practices psychiatry at Stanford University, says there are days when he is "ashamed" of his profession, nights when he cannot stop thinking about the Canadian psychiatrist who "ruined my father's life . . . Left him with nothing. It's a nightmare that never ends." With funding from the CIA, the late Dr. D. Ewen Cameron did a series of mind-control experiments on 53 people, including Harvey Weinstein's father, Louis, a prosperous Montreal businessman. All had come to the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University in Montreal between 1957 and 1961 for treatment of various psychological ailments. The experiments, Weinstein says, left his father "a human guinea pig, a poor pathetic man with no memory, no life. He lost his business, he lost everything." Weinstein is one of nine plaintiffs in a lawsuit, seeking damages from the CIA. To erase or "de-pattern" personality traits, Cameron gave his subjects megadoses of LSD, subjected them to drug-induced "sleep therapy" for up to 65 consecutive days and applied electroshock therapy at 75 times the usual intensity. To shape new behavior, Cameron forced them to listen to repeated recorded messages for 16-hour intervals, a technique known as "psychic driving." Cameron and the CIA were interested in brainwashing and the ability to redirect thought and action. The patients did not consent to the treatment and were never told they were being used for research. "When you're 13 years old and you see your father -- an independent, kind, smart person -- become a different man before your eyes, it's impossible to accommodate that," Weinstein says. "I remember one of his first visits home from the hospital. He didn't talk much, and when he did talk it made no sense. When he wasn't sleeping he was drowsy. He asked us things about his parents, even though they'd been dead for years. His memory was gone. At night once, when I was in bed, I saw him come into my room and urinate on the floor. He didn't know where he was. "My father has ended up feeling guilty that he had done something to deserve this punishment. He is convinced the CIA listens to his telephone. He's ashamed, embarrassed. My mother died without seeing the end of this. It will be a tragedy if my father dies without restoring some sense of dignity to his life." Today Louis Weinstein lives alone in Montreal, cared for by his two grown daughters. No one knows the whereabouts of all the subjects, some of whom may be dead. But Louis Weinstein and eight others, including Velma Orlikow, the wife of a New Democratic Party member of the Canadian parliament, claim they have been injured irreparably by the experiments. "I'd say Velma operates at about 20 percent of capacity," David Orlikow says. "It's horrific." The CIA's involvement in mind control experiments has been coming to light for years. The suit filed by the group against the U.S. government has been pending here in U.S. District Court since December 1980 before Judge John Garrett Penn. The plaintiffs originally asked for $1 million each in damages but have cut that to $175,000. The government has offered to pay $25,000. The group's attorney, Joseph Rauh Jr., calls the settlement offer "demeaning" and contends that the CIA has managed to delay the proceedings by "stonewalling." The CIA's counsel, Lee Strickland, declined to comment on the case. Agency spokeswoman Kathy Pherson said, "We don't comment on cases under litigation. It's inappropriate to try cases in the press." In Cameron's defense, Brian Robertson, the present director of the Allan Institute, and James Farquhar, a psychiatrist there, wrote in the Montreal Gazette that "we have not been able to uncover a single shred of evidence that Dr. Cameron knew of the CIA connection with his research funding." They said Cameron's work "must be placed in its historical context" and that "in Cameron's day researchers were not expected to inform their patients of the nature of their research in the way that they are today." The CIA has asked Judge Penn to block Rauh from taking depositions from two key agency figures -- Stacey Hulse and John Knaus, who have been publicly identified as former CIA station chiefs in Ottawa. They are both retired. Cameron, who died of a heart attack while mountain climbing in 1967, had been one of the most prominent psychiatrists in North America. A former president of both the Canadian and American psychiatric associations, he was selected to diagnose Nazi figures, including Rudolf Hess, during the Nuremberg trials. (He declared Hess sane.) But for his work on brainwashing and mind control, critics have called him a "mad scientist." "We hanged Nazis for doing the sort of things Cameron did," says Rauh. "Cameron wanted to be up there with Freud," says David Orlikow. "He wanted that stature, so he would do anything. Anything! It was horrific." Since World War II, U.S. intelligence agencies have been interested in the techniques of controlling behavior and thought. The military was especially intrigued by interrogation techniques used on American POWs during the Korean War. Brainwashing entered the American vocabulary. The CIA's first major project in the area, called ARTICHOKE, was rudimentary compared to MKULTRA, which succeeded it in 1953. Through front organizations, the CIA channeled about $10 million to dozens of universities and independent researchers. In one highly publicized experiment an Army employe, Dr. Frank Olson, was given LSD without his knowledge. He was hospitalized and days later jumped out a window to his death. Few people knew much about MKULTRA and cases like those of Frank Olson until 1977, when requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act exposed the nature and breadth of the CIA's activities. Such intelligence experiments have since been outlawed. Former CIA director Richard Helms had ordered papers concerning the experiments in Montreal destroyed in 1973, but in 1977, acting on a Freedom of Information Act request by writer John Marks, then-CIA director Adm. Stansfield Turner announced that some files had not been destroyed. Those documents form the basis of what is generally known about the work of D. Ewen Cameron. A CIA chemist, Sidney Gottlieb, supervised the MKULTRA project from within the agency, documents show. A CIA doctor, Lt. Col. James L. Monroe, worked undercover and ran the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, the organization that channeled money to Cameron and the Allan Institute. Rauh contends that Cameron knew the CIA was interested in his work and actively solicited the grant. With the CIA's approval (and with checks drawn against U.S. Treasury funds), documents show that Monroe got at least $60,000 to Cameron. Velma Orlikow: I suffer from chronic depression which sometimes becomes acute. I call those periods my 'black holes.' I don't see anybody and I won't leave the house. I can't read and I used to love to read. I can't write a letter. I have unexplained fears. I wake up at night afraid and I don't know why. I'm trying to limp through my life like someone who's been in a terrible accident that leaves them crippled. Dr. Cameron could be cruel if you didn't do exactly what he wanted. He was a god figure to the patients. He'd say to me, 'What's the matter with you, lassie?' I still hear his voice sometimes. Ewen Cameron was born in Scotland and educated at the University of Glasgow, the Glasgow Royal Mental Hospital and at Johns Hopkins. He first won a measure of fame for setting up mobile psychiatric clinics in the '30s in Canada. During the war, Cameron was part of an international committee of psychiatrists and social scientists who studied the origins and nature of Nazi culture. He published numerous articles on mass psychology during wartime. Cameron began the Allan Memorial Institute in 1943 with the help of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. He gave numerous speeches on "the problem of Germany" and believed that the psychology and forces that gave to rise to Nazism may have been longstanding in German culture. Although he was based in Montreal, Cameron became an American citizen and angered many in the bilingual community of Montreal for being an insistent English speaker. More and more, Cameron came to believe in the possibility of changing the human mind, of altering thought and behavior patterns. But rather than experiment in psychotherapy, what Freudians have called "the talking cure," Cameron believed in quicker, organic means, including drugs and electroshock. He began experimenting on organic ways of controlling schizophrenia. The experiments of 1957-1961 were done on patients, mostly women, who entered the Allan Institute voluntarily, usually at the recommendation of a private physician. Louis Weinstein went to the institute suffering from respiratory and digestive difficulties caused by anxiety. After undergoing the complete treatment of LSD and other drugs, electroshock and psychic driving, Weinstein is, in his son's words, a "lost soul . . . My father has no social sense, how to keep clean, how to carry on a conversation." "They took his self away from him." Velma Orlikow suffered from depression after the birth of her daughter. After several years of treatment with a private psychiatrist in Winnipeg, she entered the Allan Institute to speed her progress. Without being told the nature of the injections, she was given shots of LSD on 14 occasions and went through psychic-driving sessions. She found the treatments frightening but, according to her testimony, Cameron persuaded her to continue until 1963. Now Orlikow says she cannot concentrate well, can no longer read books or magazine articles. Dr. Mary Morrow approached Cameron for a fellowship in psychiatry, but Cameron thought, after a physical exam, that Morrow appeared "nervous" and admitted her as a patient instead. For 11 days, Morrow says she underwent de-patterning experiments that included electroshock treatment, and barbiturates. The treatment resulted in a brain anoxia -- not enough oxygen reaching the brain -- and she was hospitalized. Today Morrow suffers from prosopagnosia -- she cannot recognize people's faces. The list goes on. Robert Logie, a native of Vancouver, says he cannot hold a steady job or sleep without the help of drugs. He suffers from severe depression and still dreams about the experiments. Lyvia Stadler of Montreal has been institutionalized. In his court claim, Rauh claims that not only did the experiments have "no likely therapeutic value," they also violated the accepted standards of medical experimentation as formulated at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials and ratified in the Charter of the United Nations. "The frustration is incredible," Harvey Weinstein says. "It's impossible to know, to ever know, what kind of life my father might have led, what kind of lives all these people might have led, if this had never happened. So much has been stolen from my father and everyone like him." Dr. Mary Morrow: "I'm 68 years old now. Most of us who have suffered from Ewen Cameron are getting old. I don't have a cent left in savings. I've spent it all on lawyers. The stigma of this case ruined me professionally. I think I'll be dead and buried by the time this is over.  0 Comments Must Reads newsletter Get five of our best stories in your inbox every Saturday, plus a peek behind the scenes into how one came together. 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[fesahaawit]

Seeking Financial Stability as a Gay, Non-White, Man of Muslim Faith

So I got a pretty intense email the other day, and my gut said to share it here with y’all in hopes it broadens our perspectives more.

We talk a lot about our dreams and perfect lifestyles that money brings, but something that’s easily forgotten is how important the *safety* and *security* money can bring is too. Especially for those with drastically different backgrounds than ours.

I know it’s a risk sharing this correspondence here, but I also know how loving and respectful our community is so I’m hoping our new friend leaves here today feeling better (and more motivated!) about his situation than before he got here :) I can’t even try to relate to his situation, but I also know how talking it out and getting fresh perspectives can help immensely!

So if you have something positive to add after reading this, especially those in similar situations?, please do share. It’s nice to have a safe area to discuss this type of stuff, especially with all the turmoil going on these days…

Here are briefly edited snippets from our email conversations. His name has been anonymized.

******

Hello,

I don’t know if you expect to know who your readers are, but the reason I feel I need to learn more about money is because of security.

I’m an urban planning student of 25 in Lisbon, Portugal and I believe I need to feel I’m economically stable to have security over my unchosen heritage: being gay, of non-white ancestry and part of a religious Muslim community.

These three parts of my life makes me feel unsure about my future, and a better foundation of finances would help immensely:

– With the rise of Muslim hatred worldwide (specially in the “western world” where I live in), if I ever need to migrate to a more secure place, having money helps to start a new business, buy a house, etc.

– My closest family members are spread across the globe, and if any disaster happens (say, someone close to me dies suddenly), having money helps to buy an expensive last minute ticket to be there and give support on those difficult times. These trips cost around €1500). Or to simply have the comfort of visiting them every year.

– With society still intolerant towards LGBT+ people (within my own Muslim community, or even, within many white gays being racist towards non-white gays) having money helps because I want to have kids with my boyfriend and we’d need a lot of money to send them to private schools that would help assure their security, respect and integration more.

– Not to mention that being a gay couple adopting, we’ll have much more bureaucratic barriers, so a good net worth is a plus. As well as for providing educating, health, food, activities, etc for our kid.

– Money can’t assure I won’t ever face discrimination, so IF anything happens along the way, paying lawyers to fight for my justice is costly and I would like to fight for it.

– I’m a genetic bomb of diseases: family history of cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, blood pressure, scoliosis, etc. I might end up with a major chronicle disease that will disable me. Having money will help to pay for chemotherapy or big surgeries (like I had when I was 18. I had an urgent spine surgery that cost €24,000. Fortunately my parents were able to pay, otherwise I’d have to wait years for government aid and risk having problems later because the surgery had to be done right then and there).

– Lisbon is a wonderful city, but very very vulnerable to a mega earthquake anytime soon because we’ve had the deadliest earthquakes in history around the 1530’s, then the 1750’s and it’s probably going to happen again soon. Our city is not prepared for an earthquake, so having money (preferably not just in Lisbon) will help rebuild my life if a disaster like that happens again.

I did my school in the regular time (12 grades) with the highest marks in my classes. I entered university when I was 17-18 and expected to have a degree by 22-23 and start my career from there. With money (economic stability) I wouldn’t have to fear admitting I was either gay or Muslim or whatever (being me). I wouldn’t have anything to lose, right?

But things didn’t go as I planned. The school experience has been so horrible that I’ve been failing for the last three years and I’m currently in my last year of university. The prospects of growing economically in the urban planning field now seem scarce (especially someone who has been failing for the last three years… Who would want to hire such a failure?)

It makes me feel that I’m being left behind: many of my friends have graduated, are getting economical stability, and don’t have the fear of being rejected because they are gay, nor fear being profiled because they are Muslims.

And I feel that my economic independence is getting further away rather than closer. I feel stuck: until I have money, I can’t really be who I am. I’m always at more risk.

I am trying to convince myself that I have to be happy now. That I cannot project happiness to the future: “when I reach X is when I’ll be happy”. To be happy now with what I got.

I don’t know if it’s the media or what, but I still feel very insecure about everything. Even online I choose a nickname for me to freely say that I’m gay, Muslim and non-white (Iqbal is not my real name) so I don’t fear any repercussion.

I did two years of psychotherapy and a year of anti-depressive medication, but I still felt stuck. Talking about how miserable I feel only makes me continue feeling miserable. There’s a Portuguese expression that says “a dog who barks doesn’t bite”. I feel I need to stop barking and start biting.

Kind regards from Portugal

-Iqbal Hassan

P.S.: Even the psychotherapy and meds for years were costly. Luckily I was provided with that by my parents, but what if I didn’t have the money to have that privilege? I don’t want to feel insecure to the point that I won’t do psychotherapy just because of money. I don’t want money to be a preoccupation in my life, yet paradoxically it is.

*****

I replied back thanking him for sharing his story with me as it’s one I can’t even conjure up if I tried?!, and that I wholeheartedly agree with the power of being financially stable (or “economically stable”, as he likes to put it). I then asked if we could publish his thoughts here.

I told him it’s a story we don’t hear much of in our blogging world, and although I can’t relate to his situation personally, I felt it would be helpful for others to hear too. If only to realize just how fortunate we are! I also reminded him how powerful it is that he knows himself so well at his age, and encouraged him to keep searching hard for those opportunities and do his best to not lose hope :(

I wasn’t sure how the convo would go from there, but to my surprise he responded back with some pretty fascinating insight! So of course I had to share that with you guys too :) And THIS is the part that really got my attention… and the one I think most of us can relate to more too.

Here’s Iqbal again:

******

Thank you so much for your reply, J.

Writing down my concerns, specially for someone else “playing the game well” to read it, allowed me to have a clearer view over what really bothers me.

And to have that someone validate is an even bigger plus, so thank you once again.

For a long time I’ve been a bit like “money is evil because it gives the wrong impression that whoever accumulates more has more worth, or is more intelligent.”

But money is intrinsically worth nothing. A person with a lot of money in a deserted island and no survival skills is in a worse scenario than a person below the poverty line and with great survival skills in the same deserted island.

And it’s true, it’s horrible to know that 1% of the world has more access to goods and services than the rest, just because of this thing (capital or net worth) that is very virtual.

But the problem is not money, the problem is human. Money is a tool. If money didn’t exist, something else would, and that would create this inequality. Just like I feel that most political ideologies and most religions have, in it’s core, peace and harmony. Problem is that humans, imperfect as we are, create chaos.

Fortunately, many of us also organize ourselves and create mechanisms of justice. Which is why I’m able to write to you today because I went to a school that someone created, I’m using a computer that took decades of improvements, I’m using a normalized refined electricity produced somewhere around Portugal, etc.

Chances are that I won’t be ending up in a deserted island. So in the meantime I keep living in a city, I have a family, I have friends and I’m in a society that uses money. I could choose to relinquish everything and move away to build my own house alone, grow my own food alone, etc., but that’s probably not worth it just to prove a point.

I’d much rather take advantage of this complex society that took hundreds of years of development.

Although still imperfect, it seems to be turning better, slowly: more information is out there, the internet access, the podcasts, more human rights revolutions, a shift to the official end of racism, sexism, medical achievements, technology, electricity, trains, etc.

So why ignore? Why not contribute to the system? It’s not perfect, but it won’t cease existing if I run away. If I can’t beat it, I’ll join it and try to make it as better as I can, for everyone, including me.

Is it easier than running away to a deserted island and living solely on my skills? It’s arguable.

It also depends on the person. For some it could be an easy option. For others, not. After considering that option for a while, I realize that I’m better off remaining in the system. And that’s why I want financial independence.

In the system that I chose to REMAIN in, money buys freedom, like you said. It’s not everything, but it’s very important to not forget about it.

I wasn’t expecting a proposal to post my story. It would be an honor if you did that. Just the fact that you read it and it resonated somehow makes me feel hopeful.

I will keep in touch, have a great week!

Kind regards from Portugal,

-Iqbal

*****

It’s hard to put into words how that last email moved me, particularly after the first one which was filled with so much distraught! How powerful the human mind is though, right?? Full of so many emotions and ideas and flipping through it all trying to make sense of the world?

I feel like that first email was for him, but this second one is for us :) I’m not sure at what point anyone ever “figures it out”, but it seems to me that it may just be an ever evolving process that we get better at as the years progress. And we keep striving for it the entire time!

Would love to hear your thoughts on any of this, and particularly any advice you have for our friend Iqbal here? Please do share them below and encourage him to keep fighting the good fight.

Financial freedom is more than just about not having to work anymore or having fun all day long – it can help immensely with feeling more safe and secure too!

***** [Photo of Lisbon by Miguel Vieira // It’s the view from the Miradouro de Santa Luzia at sunset.]

Seeking Financial Stability as a Gay, Non-White, Man of Muslim Faith posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

[heliosfinance]

Seeking Financial Stability as a Gay, Non-White, Man of Muslim Faith

So I got a pretty intense email the other day, and my gut said to share it here with y’all in hopes it broadens our perspectives more.

We talk a lot about our dreams and perfect lifestyles that money brings, but something that’s easily forgotten is how important the *safety* and *security* money can bring is too. Especially for those with drastically different backgrounds than ours.

I know it’s a risk sharing this correspondence here, but I also know how loving and respectful our community is so I’m hoping our new friend leaves here today feeling better (and more motivated!) about his situation than before he got here :) I can’t even try to relate to his situation, but I also know how talking it out and getting fresh perspectives can help immensely!

So if you have something positive to add after reading this, especially those in similar situations?, please do share. It’s nice to have a safe area to discuss this type of stuff, especially with all the turmoil going on these days…

Here are briefly edited snippets from our email conversations. His name has been anonymized.

******

Hello,

I don’t know if you expect to know who your readers are, but the reason I feel I need to learn more about money is because of security.

I’m an urban planning student of 25 in Lisbon, Portugal and I believe I need to feel I’m economically stable to have security over my unchosen heritage: being gay, of non-white ancestry and part of a religious Muslim community.

These three parts of my life makes me feel unsure about my future, and a better foundation of finances would help immensely:

– With the rise of Muslim hatred worldwide (specially in the “western world” where I live in), if I ever need to migrate to a more secure place, having money helps to start a new business, buy a house, etc.

– My closest family members are spread across the globe, and if any disaster happens (say, someone close to me dies suddenly), having money helps to buy an expensive last minute ticket to be there and give support on those difficult times. These trips cost around €1500). Or to simply have the comfort of visiting them every year.

– With society still intolerant towards LGBT+ people (within my own Muslim community, or even, within many white gays being racist towards non-white gays) having money helps because I want to have kids with my boyfriend and we’d need a lot of money to send them to private schools that would help assure their security, respect and integration more.

– Not to mention that being a gay couple adopting, we’ll have much more bureaucratic barriers, so a good net worth is a plus. As well as for providing educating, health, food, activities, etc for our kid.

– Money can’t assure I won’t ever face discrimination, so IF anything happens along the way, paying lawyers to fight for my justice is costly and I would like to fight for it.

– I’m a genetic bomb of diseases: family history of cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, blood pressure, scoliosis, etc. I might end up with a major chronicle disease that will disable me. Having money will help to pay for chemotherapy or big surgeries (like I had when I was 18. I had an urgent spine surgery that cost €24,000. Fortunately my parents were able to pay, otherwise I’d have to wait years for government aid and risk having problems later because the surgery had to be done right then and there).

– Lisbon is a wonderful city, but very very vulnerable to a mega earthquake anytime soon because we’ve had the deadliest earthquakes in history around the 1530’s, then the 1750’s and it’s probably going to happen again soon. Our city is not prepared for an earthquake, so having money (preferably not just in Lisbon) will help rebuild my life if a disaster like that happens again.

I did my school in the regular time (12 grades) with the highest marks in my classes. I entered university when I was 17-18 and expected to have a degree by 22-23 and start my career from there. With money (economic stability) I wouldn’t have to fear admitting I was either gay or Muslim or whatever (being me). I wouldn’t have anything to lose, right?

But things didn’t go as I planned. The school experience has been so horrible that I’ve been failing for the last three years and I’m currently in my last year of university. The prospects of growing economically in the urban planning field now seem scarce (especially someone who has been failing for the last three years… Who would want to hire such a failure?)

It makes me feel that I’m being left behind: many of my friends have graduated, are getting economical stability, and don’t have the fear of being rejected because they are gay, nor fear being profiled because they are Muslims.

And I feel that my economic independence is getting further away rather than closer. I feel stuck: until I have money, I can’t really be who I am. I’m always at more risk.

I am trying to convince myself that I have to be happy now. That I cannot project happiness to the future: “when I reach X is when I’ll be happy”. To be happy now with what I got.

I don’t know if it’s the media or what, but I still feel very insecure about everything. Even online I choose a nickname for me to freely say that I’m gay, Muslim and non-white (Iqbal is not my real name) so I don’t fear any repercussion.

I did two years of psychotherapy and a year of anti-depressive medication, but I still felt stuck. Talking about how miserable I feel only makes me continue feeling miserable. There’s a Portuguese expression that says “a dog who barks doesn’t bite”. I feel I need to stop barking and start biting.

Kind regards from Portugal

-Iqbal Hassan

P.S.: Even the psychotherapy and meds for years were costly. Luckily I was provided with that by my parents, but what if I didn’t have the money to have that privilege? I don’t want to feel insecure to the point that I won’t do psychotherapy just because of money. I don’t want money to be a preoccupation in my life, yet paradoxically it is.

*****

I replied back thanking him for sharing his story with me as it’s one I can’t even conjure up if I tried?!, and that I wholeheartedly agree with the power of being financially stable (or “economically stable”, as he likes to put it). I then asked if we could publish his thoughts here.

I told him it’s a story we don’t hear much of in our blogging world, and although I can’t relate to his situation personally, I felt it would be helpful for others to hear too. If only to realize just how fortunate we are! I also reminded him how powerful it is that he knows himself so well at his age, and encouraged him to keep searching hard for those opportunities and do his best to not lose hope :(

I wasn’t sure how the convo would go from there, but to my surprise he responded back with some pretty fascinating insight! So of course I had to share that with you guys too :) And THIS is the part that really got my attention… and the one I think most of us can relate to more too.

Here’s Iqbal again:

******

Thank you so much for your reply, J.

Writing down my concerns, specially for someone else “playing the game well” to read it, allowed me to have a clearer view over what really bothers me.

And to have that someone validate is an even bigger plus, so thank you once again.

For a long time I’ve been a bit like “money is evil because it gives the wrong impression that whoever accumulates more has more worth, or is more intelligent.”

But money is intrinsically worth nothing. A person with a lot of money in a deserted island and no survival skills is in a worse scenario than a person below the poverty line and with great survival skills in the same deserted island.

And it’s true, it’s horrible to know that 1% of the world has more access to goods and services than the rest, just because of this thing (capital or net worth) that is very virtual.

But the problem is not money, the problem is human. Money is a tool. If money didn’t exist, something else would, and that would create this inequality. Just like I feel that most political ideologies and most religions have, in it’s core, peace and harmony. Problem is that humans, imperfect as we are, create chaos.

Fortunately, many of us also organize ourselves and create mechanisms of justice. Which is why I’m able to write to you today because I went to a school that someone created, I’m using a computer that took decades of improvements, I’m using a normalized refined electricity produced somewhere around Portugal, etc.

Chances are that I won’t be ending up in a deserted island. So in the meantime I keep living in a city, I have a family, I have friends and I’m in a society that uses money. I could choose to relinquish everything and move away to build my own house alone, grow my own food alone, etc., but that’s probably not worth it just to prove a point.

I’d much rather take advantage of this complex society that took hundreds of years of development.

Although still imperfect, it seems to be turning better, slowly: more information is out there, the internet access, the podcasts, more human rights revolutions, a shift to the official end of racism, sexism, medical achievements, technology, electricity, trains, etc.

So why ignore? Why not contribute to the system? It’s not perfect, but it won’t cease existing if I run away. If I can’t beat it, I’ll join it and try to make it as better as I can, for everyone, including me.

Is it easier than running away to a deserted island and living solely on my skills? It’s arguable.

It also depends on the person. For some it could be an easy option. For others, not. After considering that option for a while, I realize that I’m better off remaining in the system. And that’s why I want financial independence.

In the system that I chose to REMAIN in, money buys freedom, like you said. It’s not everything, but it’s very important to not forget about it.

I wasn’t expecting a proposal to post my story. It would be an honor if you did that. Just the fact that you read it and it resonated somehow makes me feel hopeful.

I will keep in touch, have a great week!

Kind regards from Portugal,

-Iqbal

*****

It’s hard to put into words how that last email moved me, particularly after the first one which was filled with so much distraught! How powerful the human mind is though, right?? Full of so many emotions and ideas and flipping through it all trying to make sense of the world?

I feel like that first email was for him, but this second one is for us :) I’m not sure at what point anyone ever “figures it out”, but it seems to me that it may just be an ever evolving process that we get better at as the years progress. And we keep striving for it the entire time!

Would love to hear your thoughts on any of this, and particularly any advice you have for our friend Iqbal here? Please do share them below and encourage him to keep fighting the good fight.

Financial freedom is more than just about not having to work anymore or having fun all day long – it can help immensely with feeling more safe and secure too!

***** [Photo of Lisbon by Miguel Vieira // It’s the view from the Miradouro de Santa Luzia at sunset.]

Seeking Financial Stability as a Gay, Non-White, Man of Muslim Faith published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B