Samwise Gamgee and I want to send love to anyone who is struggling tonight. I know there’s a lot of people scared and hurting about the US Presidential elections.
For everyone literally getting sick with anxiety here are some things you CAN do to feel better in the light of so much overwhelming can’t. These are not cures for actual clinical anxiety, which should be managed with help from a mental health profesional—these are just some small, everyday things I personally do as someone who deals with OCD and stomach issues every day:
Sip water or tea. Chamomile and lemon balm are good.
Eat simple foods that are easy on your stomach. My favorite is sugar free Jello. Comfort yourself the way you would when you are actually sick—your body doesn’t know the difference.
Eat foods that are rich in folate, which helps your body produce neurotransmitters like serotonin. Blueberries, kale, and dark chocolate are good for this. So is plan old-fashioned sunshine.
Snuggle your pets. They love you. They don’t care about politics.
Watch a Disney movie. Watch Mr. Rogers.
Go shopping. You don’t have to buy stuff. But browsing nice, aesthetically pleasing places like a Bath and Body Works is very comforting. Plus it gets out of the house. Take a friend with you!
Peoplewatch! Try a park, playground, a mall, or a campus building.
Belly breathe: Spend some time slowly but pointedly breathing with your stomach rather than your upper chest.
Reading can be hard to focus on when you’re anxious, but listening to audio books works wonders. Try LibriVox or AudioBookRadio.
Seek companions and empathy. Talk about what upsets you. But don’t do it alone—online venting, for example, is highly stressful and can be counterproductive because of its one sidedness. Find someone you trust and talk to them. Talk to your mom. Find a human voice.
Take a gentle, safe sleep aid. Nyquil makes a safe sleep aid. Benadryl and dramamine are also good sleep aids. Avoid alcohol—it’s hard on your already agitated stomach.
Interact with your immediate environment and the people in it. Visit your neighbor. Go for a walk. Sign up to volunteer at a soup kitchen. Getting involved in your local community is a good way to shrink what feel like overwhelming problems into manageable bites.
Watch QVC. I know this sounds weird, but QVC is a rock for times when you’re stuck alone with your problems, especially at night—it’s broadcast live, which is a nice reminder that the world is still turning, Plus, they talk to you in a positive, encouraging tone, as opposed to the news, which is mostly designed to terrify you.
Watch The Weather Channel. Like QVC, The Weather Channel is comforting in its predictability and live broadcasting. The content is not as positive, but it is a good distraction and a reminder that there is a real, living world out there.
There are lots of live online stations you can watch, too. Live kittens, live underwater kelp forests. Here are Cornell Labs’ Live Bird Cams: http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/
Try Yoga. Even a simple beginner’s video where you’re gently guided to focus on your body will help calm you: Here’s a good one for beginners.
Focus on the present. Focus on an environment you can physically improve. Anxiety is mostly the fear of an uncertain future—so focus on what you can do right now in the room you’re in. Are there dishes to wash? A bed to make? Work to do? Do these things. Chores are amazing at relieving anxiety. I recommend @unfuckyourhabitat if you need inspiration.
Do homework. I’m not even joking. There’s a difference between good knowledge and bad knowledge, and no matter your age, actively putting good knowledge into your brain helps relieve stress. Find a topic that you don’t know much about. Research it. Take notes. Learn something new. Write a friend and email telling them all about this new thing you’ve learned.
Take a bath.
Masturbate. YOU BET. Touching yourself in a soothing way and allowing yourself to feel pleasure is a great reminder to your body that you care about it.
Pamper yourself. Paint your nails. Put on makeup.
Try ASMR, a proven relaxation technique. I recommend Maria aka Gentlewhispering:
Also, I mentioned this on Twitter, but if you’re up to it, and you have the strength, chat with people online. Let friends know that your DMs and messages are open. Reach out to strangers who are scared. Wish people well.
You have a right to feel angry, frustrated, and frightened today. But comforting others will help you feel less powerless.
Ever wonder how big wolves are and why running from them is a really bad idea?
This had me so fucked up the first time I worked at the zoo. Because honestly they just look like big German-Huskies when they’re not wild. They look like big puppies. And then… they get close to you… And it’s suddenly kinda fucking terrifying. Like “oh this is the animal that used to scare people shitless.” “This is the animal that used to run through nightmares and poems so much.” And you suddenly fucking get it. As cool as these animals are far away, as important as the animals are in their natural environment, as much as we need them to survive… they’re still pretty fucking terrifying
can you believe these things became our friends
And then people domesticated them and now sleep with them in their beds.
We’re not a species meant to last
I’d actually argue the opposite!
We took these super efficient killing machines and befriended them and now they love and protect us as much as we (ideally) love and protect them
Cats basically domesticated themselves so that they could share in our food, medical care, and affection
In urban spaces, prey species know that there’s a higher likelihood that humans will help you if you’re stuck or injured than them killing or maiming you
It’s just, over time we see trends of our species overcoming environmental pressures that would and do lead to extinction in other species by sharing and forming close bonds with other sentient organisms and just kinda… aggressively community-bonding our way out of it?
For a long time there’s been this pervading idea that we, as a species, are just innately violent and terrible and “sinful” and it’s been that violence that let us survive (see the hunting hypothesis of human evolution). But that’s not what we see
We are, at our core, a species that looks into the face of something other, and thinks “I wonder if they want to be friends?” so long as the individual isn’t actively trying to kill us. Sure, tons of people do awful things every day, but for every terrible act or thought on this Earth, there are a dozen acts of kindness that people do casually for complete strangers
So yeah. We looked at these massive fluffy monsters with the sharp claws and crushing jaws rooting in our garbage just beyond the campfire and thought, the way no other species before or after us has done to the same extent; “They look friend-shaped!”
And they were. And that is how we got to be the dominant species on this planet
Let’s brace ourselves, folks. This one is gonna be a bumpy ride. I’ve already read enough about Tom’s moaning as Jonathan Harker in this 2012 radio play from BBC.
Oh, this is going to be FUN.
Already pre ordered, can’t wait for tomorrow 😀
Do I know anyone who has ordered this??? I’m on the fence about it! I disliked the style of Dracula but it’s David Suchet and Tom Hiddleston, so… Please help! 🙂
That depends of course on what sort of vampire we’re aiming for. Infectious vampirism would require an infectious agents of course and there I would tend more towards viruses because they do muck around with DNA and protein construction so for physical changes that’d be neat.
At the same time, parasitic infectious a la The Strain are also really tempting, especially because it drifts over into ‘behavioural changes caused by parasites’ which is just hella cool, though I figure that those vampires would be sitting halfway between what we tend to think of as vampires and Umbrella Corp zombies.
If we’re going with non-infectious vampirism, the field of genetics is wiiiiide open, though personally I’m not a huge fan of the whole ‘super predator’ thing because again, evolution the straight C student. You wouldn’t get twilight-style ‘super attractive/fast/strong’ because frankly one of those would be perfectly sufficient and as we all know, the concept of evolution is to get a ‘good enough’ and that’s it. Look at cheetahs. They’re incredibly speedy, but like sighthounds they’re not terribly strong. They don’t need to be. If you can run your intended prey down and strangle-bite the exhausted gazelle, there’s no need for you to be able to rip it into two parts as well.
So like, you’re vampires are fabulously hot, chances are it’s a prey lure tactic and they’re not very fast. If you make them poisonous they might not even be very strong. On the other hands, if they’re ugly as sin you’re most likely looking at something that’s doesn’t need to make humans come close it so it probably *is* really speedy and/or strong enough to kill you before you can get away.
So uh yeah basically first you gotta settle on what sort of vampirism you want and then you gotta consider how you’d arrive at that particular kind through evolutionary sensible means (meaning with the last amount of effort). Thankfully nature provides for a lot of inspiration already if you want to wrangle out specific details.
I-want-my-IWTV 