What is an emotional flashback? Pete Walker describes it like this: "Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions ('amygdala hijackings') to the frightening circumstances of childhood. They are typically experienced as intense and confusing episodes of fear and/or despair - or as sorrowful and/or enraged reactions to this fear and despair. Emotional flashbacks are especially painful because the inner critic typically overlays them with toxic shame, inhibiting the individual from seeking comfort and support, isolating him in an overwhelming and humiliating sense of defectiveness." It's kind of like being stuck in a dark tunnel. I can't see who I am anymore, ...
Tag Archives: mental health
Arguing on the internet is not worth the cost to your mental health
I checked the post history of a Reddit user who said they were feeling very triggered lately... and their post history was full of them arguing with various people in political subreddits. I thought: "well, that's certainly not helping!" Getting involved in internet arguments is really really bad for your mental health! Arguing is a trap - don't fall in it. 99% of the time people won't change their minds anyway. I mean, have you ever seen it happen? I haven't, and I was the admin of a forum for 16 years. In over 500k posts and thousands of dramatic arguments, ...
Free Isochronic Tones For Grounding (7.83Hz)
I've been playing around with creating isochronic tones for myself, and decided to share some. They should be playable in the playlist player, and you should also be able to do the "save link as" thingy to save the .ogg files on your computer/device so you can play them in whatever player you prefer. They are each 10 minutes long. I personally find that's more than long enough because my ears tend to get tired of them after a while. A decent audio player should be able to loop each individual file infinitely if you tell it to. On linux, Qmmp and ...
How I learned to say NO
Googling "how to say no" brings up a lot of advice articles, with tips for how to say it politely, and a few really basic things about why it's hard to say no... but I found those somewhat lacking. For me it was never a matter of finding the right words, it was about really genuinely understanding why the fuck it's been so hard, and actually finding solutions for the underlying causes. Why is it so hard to say no? Saying no feels like rebellion Rebelling as a kid meant I'd be in trouble, and being in trouble was scary, therefore saying no ...
Journaling
How journaling has helped me Journaling has helped me get to know myself better. To figure out how I feel about things, to access my feelings in general. I used to have a lot of brain fog, like I was trying to think of something but I couldn't find the words for it because it was just a thick fog in my mind. I had racing thoughts when trying to sleep. When I would lie down in bed and try to sleep, I'd lie awake for hours just thinking about stuff. Often the thoughts would race so fast they didn't even make ...