Therapy is risky because sometimes they'll just ask you their standard "why can't you, though", and you think you're making some good point by saying something like "well if I don't do anything with my life then what's the point of being alive in the first place" and your therapist gets that look on their face and you immediately realise that your dumb ass just got caught, pinned to the ground with your stupid-ass neck between the spikes of a pitchfork, and you are not going to wiggle out of there before you two unpack what the fuck you just said.

As a former psychiatric nurse, I am here to tell you in utter seriousness that OUR ENTIRE DAMN JOB is to listen carefully enough to you that we can feed you the lines that will get you to this place: where you HEAR the thing that just actually fell out of your face while you were so busy trying to hold your act in place that you couldn't keep it from doing that.

The human mind—that exquisitely complex thing—is ALL about maintaining its current smooth operational status. EVEN when that status is wildly dysfunctional and/or destructive. I mean, the brain says, hardly ever hearing its own desperation, everything's working pretty well right now, isn't it? And it can't hear the (internal laugh track) audience's painful response.

Our job is to startle you into hearing the internal laugh track: and yeah, the pain. There is no other way to get out of the pain than to acknowledge that you're in it, and at least to begin acknowledging the sources of it.

...All those light bulb jokes? About really having to want to change? They're bullshit. Believe me when I tell you that no one really wants to change. The one thing everyone I ever worked with in therapy wanted was to to stay just the way they were... just (somehow, magically) less uncomfortable. And surprise!—that's not how getting better works.

Meanwhile: this is one reason I'm lucky as a writer... because having helped actual human beings walk through this process is one of the best possible forms of preparation for walking fictional characters through it.

And if having done it with real people sometimes makes it come across in the fiction as perilously close to comedy in the timing of how it unfolds? Well, sometimes it comes across that way with the real people too. And the laughter associated with your client realizing who the joke's been on may sometimes be painful, but (when it's genuine) has a uniquely joyous sound through the pain that can't be matched by any other human experience. It's a privilege to be part of that when it happens.

All you can do is keep feeding the person you're working the straight lines they've been telling you they need... and then wait for them to give up and bite.

WHATTT?????

The saint of duty is Gideon’s dad?????

Thanks so much! This clears up absolutely nothing! Where’s that one post about this series being spoiler-proof? Whoever made it, you were entirely correct.

Now you’re just making shit up. Right? Right?

Hey @zagreuses-toast are you enjoying being as cryptic and confusing as possible? Because I am too, please carry on.

my other grounding technique is remembering that the earliest abolitionists & the earliest suffragists had no proof that the world would ever make possible what they fought for and indeed many of them did not live to see it come to pass. and yet they did not succumb to despair so it would be disrespectful to their memory to let it overtake me

a thing you can do is stop being on twitter

you have to outlive donald trump

imagine how funny the internet will be on the day he dies.

Thats gonna be a real good fucking day. I can't wait.

It seems like there’s this cycle of republicans making the economy bad and then people get tired of the republicans and elect a democrat and the democrat inherits a bad economy and then they sort of fix it somewhat and then people are like hey the economy is bad it was better during the Republican administration and then they elect a Republican who inherits a better economy from the democrat while he’s trashing it and then people are like hey he’s trashing the economy and then they elect a democrat who inherits a bad economy and fixes it somewhat and then people are like hey the economy was better when there was a Republican and then they elect a Republican who trashes the sort of better economy he inherited from the democrat and so on and so forth like forever I guess

Let’s be clear. I want the democrats to be better. They suck at a lot of stuff. They’ve done some stupid things. But Biden and the democrats stopped us from falling into a literal economic depression. They did some stuff that frickin worked. But the economy was better during the trump administration (because of the economy he inherited from the Obama administration) so let’s reelect that idiot what could go wrong surely his proposed tariffs won’t affect the prices that much in a country with a smaller manufacturing sector than it used to have that imports most of its consumer goods

why did you people come up with russian names for what is supposed to be a movie set in italy. what was the thought process here. why does she sound like she walked out of a tolstoy novel

an insane response, but i can't fight this. carry on

im being hunted for sport in the notes

WIPs are still works in progress even if no progress has been made on them for a while.

Where's that tweet about people still living long fulfilling lives even through the fall of the roman empire because I think about it constantly

Russian handwriting

I’ll forever be amused at the Russian word “deprived” (лишили) in cursive, which looks like

for people wondering how the hell that works

I still don’t know how the hell that works.

See, to me it looks a lot like ‘minimum’ in English cursive:

Ok not so bad right? But it gets worse…

Like… what even is this?

Can’t tell me that’s a word right? But it is! Sure you could dot the i’s, but would it really help?

source here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Handwriting/comments/1hgsc8/write_minimum_in_cursive_without_dotting_the_is/

Yes. Yes it would.

Wikipedia: Minim (palaeography)

Why the fuck would language evolve in such a completely illogical way like this

fuck every last bit of this

Humans invented writing as a way of communicating information and it’s pretty great on the whole but we maybe did not adequately prepare for depreciation in legibility

@official-linguistics-post ?

new high school classmate: so what’s your name

renesmee: renesmee

new classmate: that’s… interesting

renesmee: my mom was on crack when she named me

bella, sitting literally two seats away: 

I’m so concerned that this post implies Bella and Edward will attend high school again with their own daughter

youre goddamn right thats what im implying

I mean, they did lock themselves into the nightmare which is endless high school. That was a choice they made. They had every option to get a fake ID that said “twenty-one” and say, “Yeah, I do look a little young for my age. I get that a lot. Anyway, back to being a human being with full legal rights not tied to an adult and not forced to suffer through gym class forever for no godly reason.”

There’s a lot of bad things about Twilight, but the idea that anyone would willingly choose to spend eternity attending high school is… one of them.

Stay safe, guys

it’s three taps anywhere on the screen on a smartphone!

This is important punks. Deadly important.

I’ve texted their hotline before. It was super helpful and even if it hadn’t been the amount of time you’re there can be enough to let your urges fade and stay safe.