C-PTSD Recovery

The fact that there are so many hackable nervous feedback systems in the body is absurd. We can just be like "I want to feel something different now" and twitch the right muscle like switching modes on an old digital watch. Fucking ridiculous meat machine.

Sometimes I'm a bit bored and I want to feel happier and evolution gave me a specific muscle in my cheek to twitch to do this. Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.

"I want to feel more physically stable, let's fuck around with the vagus nerve." That shouldn't work. That shouldn't be a thing that we can do. This is backwards design.

Mood <--> body language is a self-reinforcing loop; your mood dictates your language and also takes cues from the language to dictate your mood. So you can change your mood by changing the body language.

You ever seen a fake smile vs a real smile (or, if you suck at body language like me, had someone point it out to you?) The main difference is whether a muscle in the corner of the eye/upper cheek is contracted or not. This is a major cue that the body listens to to know if you're happy. So if that muscle's been relaxed for a long time (you're not smiling recently), you can make yourself happy by contracting that muscle.

You can also make yourself sad or angry by stimulating various face muscles but like. Why would you.

If you're feeling generally nervous or unsettled, stimulating your vagus nerve will reset a bunch of physiological functions and calm you down. You can do this via various different maneuvres involving tensing abdominal muscles or stretching muscles along the spine that I won't detail here but are easy to look up. This is also used to 'reset' a palpitating heart. Another way to calm down is to tense and then relax the whole body, or to slow and deepen your breathing (the body breathes faster and shallower when nervous so if you breathe slow and deep it goes "oh I guess I'm not nervous then" and starts to calm down).

Basically if you physically fake a mood then a good 80% of the time your dumbshit body will just believe you, at least temporarily.

You can also slow your heart rate down by activating the mammalian dive response. by putting something cold on your face across your cheekbones your body thinks you have dived underwater and so you need to hold your breath.

You can stimulate the vagus nerve by humming and singing too, bc a part of it runs behind the vocal chords. Literally messing with wires.

Most fucked up nerve in the entire body. Real freak of a nerve.

Reset your day with this One Weird Trick!

Something that I have noticed is I know almost nobody my age that goes to a food pantry. I know people who regularly run out of money for food and in general have to eat an unsuitable diet because that’s what they can afford and they still don’t go to a food bank, im not sure if it’s because they’re embarrassed or maybe if you didn’t grow up going you don’t know much about it but if you’re financially struggling I really recommend it. And look into other options for food assistance too like community fridges and gardens and other programs that can assist you, where I live Salvation Army pays for an allotted amount of grocery delivery for low income people every month, in the summer farmers take excess produce to the library to be taken by anyone who needs it, etc. There are a LOT of resources for free food that you can look into especially if you are literally not eating because of your financial situation

“Social comparison” is one of the biggest traps when it comes to our happiness and well-being. It’s important to remind yourself that you don’t measure up with anyone, because you can’t accurately compare yourself to others. Everyone is on a different path.

Learn more: Social Comparison: The Trap Behind a “Keeping Up With The Joneses” Mentality

"It doesn’t matter how you perceive things, it’s how your child does. Don’t ever let them doubt how you feel about them."

--on a post about parents estranged from their adult children, by G1optimusprime

I love this. It's like the opposite of gaslighting. Sometimes I sit there and think, "Well, but while *I* saw this as abuse, it doesn't mean that THEY did...." But he's right: If their behavior to me was so far from good that I didn't even feel they loved me, then they failed as parents. End of.

Hey you know that thing you're good at? That thing you think makes you valuable? The way you are, or the thing you do, etc?

You can be and deserve to be and will be loved and cherished even without it.

You're not worthwhile because you help, or you are good at making your art, or your skills at your job. You're worthwhile inherently, as a person, even without all that.

And I want you to internalize that because otherwise there might come a day where you can't do The Thing You Think Makes You Valuable. You'll get sick and can't draw, you'll burn out and can't do your job, you'll be emotionally unable to do your regular helpfulness for whatever reason, and you'll start to feel like you have no worth anymore.

But that's not true. You have worth, you deserve comfort and companionship and happiness, and that's not a conditional thing. You deserve that, even if you can't be Useful and Productive and all that shit.

It's an easy trap to fall into to justify yourself as "well, at least I help/make art/work hard" and have that be entirely too much of your self-esteem. Being proud of your work is fine. Being proud of yourself solely through your productivity is not, because you're making it conditional. And conditional on something that can change for reasons completely outside your control!

You gotta stop thinking about it like you gotta justify the space you take up on the planet. It's great if all those things make you happy: just make sure they're not the only things that make you feel like you are justifying your existence, or you'll crater if they get taken away.

You are lovable and likable and you have value as a person and a member of society, even if you never can be productive again. You are enough.

i wanna add that internalizing this has been a really big part of how i have slowly been rebuilding my life after burnout and trauma basically stopped me dead in my tracks after 2021. entirely defining my self worth based on the work i do put so much more pressure on getting productive again, on at the very least being a good friend, making it completely impossible for me to actually bear either for most of 2021 and 2022.

the more i internalize that it doesn't actually fucking matter what i do the more i've been able to stand on my own again and start working towards my future. i needed that basic level of self respect and self esteem to build upon to just get to where i am now.