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Sometimes you just wanna yeet yourself into the void and tell the entire planet to fuck itself. I designed this during the 2020 US election Drawn on Procreate

Healing together, one step at a time…

It’s Monday in May, which can only mean one thing: Mental Health Month. 

This week we are all about HEALING and all the good things that come with it. They say time heals all wounds, and this is true. Everyone needs to heal in their time, in their way. But we’re wondering, why wait? With our partners @dayone-app, you will find daily writing prompts to get thinking, journaling and improving your mental wellbeing. We would love you to share your mood boards with us, aligning with this week’s theme of healing—and we hope you’ll get writing with us.

Join us in healing together, however you choose to do this, as a little bit of healing can come from the tip of a pen or the tips of your fingers…

Vlad looked imploringly at Agnes, and reached out to her.

“You wouldn’t let them kill me, would you? You wouldn’t let them do this to me? We could have…we might…you wouldn’t,would you?”

The crowd hesitated. This sounded like an important plea. A hundred pairs of eyes stared at Agnes.

She took his hand. I suppose we could work on him, said Perdita. But Agnes thought about Escrow, and the queues, and the children playing while they waited, and how evil might come animal sharp in the night, or grayly by day on a list…

“Vlad,” she said gently, looking deep into his eyes, “I’d even hold their coats.”

Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

kagetsukai:

yournewapartment:

thesnadger:

Since once in a blue moon I actually discover a decent rule for adulting, and since I know I have followers a few years younger than me who are just entering the workforce, I want to tell you about a very important phrase. 

“I won’t be available.”

Imagine you’re at work and your boss asks you to come in on Saturday. Saturday is usually your day off–coming in Saturdays is not an obligation to keep your job. Maybe you were going to watch a movie with a friend, or maybe you were just going to lie in bed and eat ice cream for eight hours, but either way you really, really don’t want to give up your day off.

If you consider yourself a millennial you’ve probably been raised to believe you need to justify not being constantly at work. And if you’re a gen-Z kid you’re likely getting the same toxic messages that we did. So in a situation like that, you might be inclined to do one of three things:

1. Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Cave when they pressure you to come in anyway, since you’re not doing anything important.
   
2. Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Over-apologize and worry that you looked bad/unprofessional.
   
3. Lie and say you’ve got a doctor’s appointment or some other activity that feels like an adequate justification for not working.
   

The fact is, it doesn’t matter to your boss whether you’re having open heart surgery or watching anime in your underwear on Saturday. The only thing that affects them is the fact that you won’t be at work. So telling them why you won’t be at work only gives them reason to try and pressure you to come in anyway.

If you say “I won’t be available,” giving no further information, you’d be surprised how often that’s enough. Be polite and sympathetic in your tone, maybe even say “sorry, but I won’t be available.” But don’t make an excuse. If your boss is a professional individual, they’ll accept that as a ‘no’ and try to find someone else. 

But bosses aren’t always professional. Sometimes they’re whiny little tyrants. So, what if they pressure you further? The answer is–politely and sympathetically give them no further information.

“Are you sure you’re not available?” “Sorry, but yes.”

“Why won’t you be available?” “I have a prior commitment.” (Which you do, even if it’s only to yourself.)

“What’s your prior commitment?” “Sorry, but that’s kind of personal.”

“Can you reschedule it?” “I’m afraid not. Maybe someone else can come in?”

If you don’t give them anything to work with, they can’t pressure you into going beyond your obligations as an employee. And when they realize that, they’ll also realize they have to find someone else to come in and move on.

IMPORTANT!! PLEASE READ!!

Just like with many other parts of life, learn to say ‘no’ to people. You are important. Don’t kill yourself for another person, esp. if they are your boss.

daughterofanarcissistwoman:

“The greatest wound a child can receive is the rejection of his authentic self. When a parent cannot affirm his child’s feelings, needs, and desires, he rejects that child’s authentic self. Then, a false self must be set up. In order to believe he is loved, the wounded child behaves the way he thinks he is supposed to. This false self develops over the years and is reinforced by the family system’s needs and by culture. Gradually, the false self becomes who the person really thinks he is. He forgets that the false self is an adaptation, an act based on a script someone else wrote. It is impossible to be intimate if you have no sense of self. How can you share yourself with another if you do not really know who you are? How can anyone know you if you do not know who you really are?

One way a person builds a strong sense of self is by developing strong boundaries. Like the borders of a country, our physical boundaries protect our bodies and signal us when someone is too close or tries to touch us in an inappropriate way. Our sexual boundaries keep us safe and comfortable sexually. (People with weak sexual boundaries often have sex when they don’t really want to.) Our emotional boundaries tell us where our emotions end and another’s begin. They tell us when our feelings are about ourselves and when they are about others. We also have intellectual and spiritual boundaries, which determine our beliefs and our values. When a child is wounded through neglect or abuse, his boundaries are violated. This sets the child up for fears of being either abandoned or engulfed. When a person knows who he is, he doesn’t fear being engulfed. When he has a sense of self-value and self-confidence, he doesn’t fear being abandoned. Without strong boundaries, we cannot know where we end and others begin. We have trouble saying no and knowing what we want, which are crucial behaviors for establishing intimacy.”

Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw

“You can do all the research in the world to understand the inner workings of the narcissist’s mind, but it will do nothing to influence the outcome of the relationship.⁠

⁠

Narcissists don’t think like most people. You can try to appeal to their seemingly ‘hurt’ inner child, be the most devoted partner or family member, and do everything they ask of you, but it will not change a thing.⁠

⁠

Ever.⁠

⁠

Narcissists are not interested in stable, loving, reciprocal connections. The idea of meeting your emotional needs repulses them to the core. The only positive leanings they have about your love and devotion are that they can use your sentimental feelings against you for their own benefit.⁠

⁠

Here’s one thing I know to be absolutely true – when it comes to narcissists, we all want to believe we’ll be the exception to the rule, but none of us ever are.⁠

⁠

There simply is not a way to “make things work” with a narcissist that doesn’t involve erasing your own identity, emotions, and needs.⁠

⁠

You cannot set boundaries with them (none that they’ll honor, anyway)⁠

⁠

You can’t reason with them.⁠

⁠

You can’t get them to stop lying, cheating, betraying, etc.⁠

⁠

You cannot have a loving, reciprocal, healthy relationship if you’re the only one interested in having it.⁠

⁠

And this is the last thing on the narcissist’s mind, even if they try to convince you otherwise. Pay attention to patterns, because patterns never lie.⁠”

⁠

#selfhealers #toxicrelationshipcheck #doesntworklikethat ⁠

( @kim.saeed )

Our third issue of Anxy is here! Order yours now; they ship July 30th!

What’s inside The Boundaries Issue?

FEATURED INTERVIEW

Open Mike Eagle on Genre-Hopping
“I live in this constant anxious thought that everything is going to be taken away from me.”

Fabiola Jean-Louis on History
“I’m thinking about a scenario where life is respected. Where there is no slavery, there is no injustice, there’s none of these things that have happened to us.”

PERSONAL ESSAYS

A collection of reflective, intimate essays

HUMOR

Samantha Irby on Anxiety
“Hello 911? I’ve barricaded myself in the bedroom because the cleaning service came before I could think of a reason I needed to leave the house for an hour and forty-five minutes.”

Dayna Evans on Silence

“In choosing to share these secrets, my mother crossed another boundary, exposing private family matters to people who felt obligated to plead ignorance.”

MEMOIR

Odalis García on Family
“By sticking together the way we did, we carried with us the Cuba my family was forced to leave behind. If we were together, then nothing could tear us apart.”

EXPERIENCE

Alana Hope Levinson on Broken Homes
“I didn’t think any sane person would want to live next to their ex.”

REPORTED FEATURES

Incisive, thoughtful reporting that gets to the core of the issues  

DISPATCH

Eric Reidy
“The government even refused to refer to people fleeing the Syrian war as ‘refugees,’ opting instead for euphemistic ‘displaced people’—blurring the legal boundaries around their obligations.”

OP-ED

Floricel Liborio Ramos
“I don’t know where they had been hiding, but suddenly there were seven ICE officers, all in uniform.”

VISUAL STORIES

Compelling photo essays and illustration that bring boundaries to life

COMING OF AGE

Paola de Grenet
“A neurologist once told us he was fascinated that she ‘presents as normal.’ So very close to what we all pass for, but in the end, her brain creates a boundary she cannot cross, a line that forks the path to the future.”

CULTURE

Jessica Chou
“For the younger generation, Paris By Night provides a sense of their history and the world their parents grew up in, even if some of the flashy costumes and Liberace-styled acts are occasionally met with an eye-roll.”

HUMOR

Gary Moskowitz
When I was a kid I was scared of barbers so my mom cut my hair. As I got older, I realized that barbers could actually be hair therapists. But they could also make things So. Much. Worse.”

COMMUNITY

Franziska Wittlede and Amazon Turk Workers
What happens when you ask random strangers to draw their boundaries?

Pictures from our launch event at Designers + Geeks in San Francisco (thanks to Yelp for the space!)

theconcealedweapon:

@sawai.co

@daniella.pdf

Anon wrote: I was hoping to seek your advice with my ISTP father. His inferior Fe is extremely underdeveloped, even though he is in his 60s. He is always starting arguments with my ISFJ (possibly ESFJ) mother and me, his ISFJ daughter. He starts disagreements over the tiniest of things and causes so much turmoil in our household. He leaves for long periods of time without telling us where he’s going, he shows no empathy for our feelings even after us expressing how we need him to change at least once a week, and does not act like he even really needs my mom.. especially like she needs him to be there for her. It’s really hard because we both love him so much, and as an adult daughter, I am well aware of the impact this is having on my mother. Do you have any advice on how to approach him about this? Explaining our feelings and even telling him directly what we need doesn’t work. I just want my parents to be happy and my mom to feel loved. Even if I can’t have the greatest relationship with him myself, I can still love him and know he loves me, but I want him to love my mom how she needs because she has suffered so much emotionally through all of this.. Thank you.

——————-

When dealing with any problem, facing facts is the first step. Your expectations of him seem very out of touch with the reality of what he is. Your expectations for the relationship seem very out of touch with the reality of what is actually possible. Since you and your mom share a similar/same type, you basically run into the same problems with him. However, keep in mind that her relationship with him is a separate entity to your relationship with him. You can’t and shouldn’t try to fix their relationship for her. The both of you need to do some personal work, if you hope to change this unhealthy relationship dynamic.

There are several issues that need to be unpacked:

1) The Problem of Boundaries: SFJs tend to be very self-sacrificing in relationships. This is a testament to their wonderfully deep capacity for love. However, this behavior can result in harm to oneself and/or others when healthy relationship boundaries are never set and properly maintained. Having no limits to what you’re willing to sacrifice leaves you wide open for exploitation. Signalling to others that you’re willing to do whatever it takes for a relationship to work is basically granting them license to take, take, take from you without having to think about giving you anything in return. This is why FJs often find themselves stuck in woefully unequal and sometimes even abusive relationships. It’s important to understand that inequality is self-inflicted suffering that arises from your lack of boundaries and/or your lack of assertiveness in enforcing boundaries. You have to be able to set limits on how much you give in relation to how much you get from the relationship. Aside from what the other person does or doesn’t do, whether a relationship has a sense of equality is largely dependent upon whether YOU assert your rights, advocate for YOUR needs, and request the respect and consideration that YOU are owed. It sounds like you tryto do this, but it is met with no good result, because you have probably waited too long and the relationship dynamic is already set. Boundaries have to be set at the start of the relationship and maintained at every turn. I suspect both you and your mom need to work on boundary setting abilities, see the resources page for book recs.

2) The Problem of Expectations: The self-sacrificing tendency can cause problems when it leads you to place unreasonable expectations upon people to reciprocate your sacrifices (especially when it comes to sacrifices that they never asked you to make). If you expect a Ti-Fe person to be a Fe-Ti person, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment. Different people show love in different ways. Trying to force an opposite personality type into being more like your type usually backfires. While you must assert yourself in a relationship and make requests of people to meet your needs, there is a hard limit as to how much a Ti-Fe person can reciprocate your devotion and sacrifice, simply because their awareness and understanding of Fe is far different from yours, especially when they have ardently resisted type development. You can’t have a healthy relationship as long as you can’t see and accept someone for who they really are. If you’re not equipped to have a relationship with a Ti-Fe person and/or if you’d rather have a relationship with a Fe-Ti person, be completely honest about it and adjust your expectations to fit the reality of the situation.

3) The Problem of Consequences: In order for people to understand that their behavior is problematic and should be changed, they have to face up to the negative consequences of it. As far as I can tell, he suffers no real consequences for his neglectful, rude, and dismissive behavior, because the both of you are still there waiting on him when he comes back, caring for him anyway. At most, he endures a bit of nagging, which he can easily tune out (out of sight, out of mind). This goes back to the first point: How much are you and your mother willing to give him before you say enough is enough and actually make him suffer some real consequences for his problematic behavior? This is not an issue of miscommunication if the real problem is that he simply doesn’t want to change. Type development is a personal choice; you can’t force it on people. I can’t tell you what sort of consequences he needs in order to finally learn something and I can’t tell you whether he will just ignore the consequences you try to inflict. I can’t tell you whether the relationship needs to end or whether it can be salvaged. All I’m saying is that it looks like he has no motivation whatsoever to change, and your willingness to put up with his bad behavior only enables his resistance to change.

4) The Problem of Sexism: It is very likely that a heterosexual relationship suffers from all kinds of underlying gender biases. As a man, he has very little reason to change his behavior when the women in his life behave as expected, as he has been taught to expect by society’s gender stereotypes. As a woman, it is very easy, even for women who identify as feminists, to unwittingly fall into the default submissive, sacrificing, or passive role that women are socialized to embody. Perhaps both you and your mom need to re-evaluate your concept of “fairness” and “equality”. Equal treatment in a relationship doesn’t magically appear, especially when you have societal forces unconsciously pushing you into an unequal relationship dynamic. If someone refuses to treat you like an equal, do you recognize it and does it bother you? At what point do you ask yourself whether the relationship is still worth your considerable investment of time, feeling, and energy?

This relationship dynamic has been going on too long and the problem keeps getting rehashed in circles with no resolution. I don’t tell people how to make decisions in life. All I can tell you is that, in order for it to change, YOU have to do something different to break the cycle, because he sure as heck isn’t going to change anything when he benefits more from it.

I was done with the waves. I have had enough of them. The waves of hopelessness that tricked my mind into believing joy would never stay. During my divorce it was understandable for me to have waves of sadness, depression, and heartbreak. However, the shock and surfaced pain wore off and I had another journey ahead…facing what has settled inside of me and made a home.

I had felt so guilty because God’s faithfulness has been so beautiful that I mistook processing pain as being ungrateful.

Then, a therapist said something that made everything shift inside of me. He shared that depression is an expression of suppressed anger. WOW. I’m not a person that gets easily angered. That hasn’t always been the case—at one time in my life I had a temper. I was a little spitfire with a lot of opinions but along the way, I convinced myself that anger was invalid and irrational.

If you are like me, then you have this ability to reframe circumstances to see them from an optimistic point of view. My therapist would say searching for a brighter side seems safer and less painful than the truth…my optimism was actually denial.

So if depression is the expression of suppressed anger…what is going inside of me? I shared with a friend and she said: “Eryn what are you angry at?” Me: “nothing…I’m really thankful..” Her: “No Eryn…what are you still angry at?” Me: “Okay, well maybe I’m angry at…” and then the list began.

Angry at him for ____.

Angry at her for ____.

Angry at them for ____.

Angry at me for ____.

For the first time…the first real time…I saw underneath. I saw the anger. I saw the pain that has been weighing me down. I saw the triggers…I saw what would have a strong hold. It took me being so embarrassed by my inconsistencies to say I’M DONE. These waves are controlling me and impacting my relationships. Admitting what I was angry at brought me closer to joy. Without pain, joy can’t exist…I get that phrase now. I found where the pain was and I’ve found how joy can sustain… // When Dr. Henry Cloud and team asked me to share a quote that meant something to me, I knew exactly what it would be.  Dr. Henry Cloud has impacted my healing so much.

Love,

Eryn

Quote from Boundaries by Dr. Cloud with Dr. John Townsend

Artwork by Ali Nelson of Ali Makes Things

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thatautismfeel:

that autism feel when people wont stop touching you when you’re literally saying don’t touch me